Did Dan and Lucy pay off their mortgage?

So much of 'reality' TV focuses on or even sets out to provoke conflict between people who even if well-adjusted at the beginning, have morphed into thoroughly unpleasant human beings by the end. One suspects that produces tend to frequently skip this step and deliberately select the exhibitionist, the opinionated, the stupid, the vain or the downright nasty...

So last week's "Did they pay off their mortgage in two years?" on BBC2 was a refreshing change. We'd met Dan and Lucy, a Cornish couple with lifestyle and family life to die for, but pretty marginal income, before. But it was great to see them again (and record it this time), as Dan, an artists-blacksmith, worked hard to market his unique wood-burning stoves, and Lucy tried to get a better return on her yoga-teaching skills...

But I didn't care too much about the end result, or the time scales. This family was too grounded to get too upset about much - and the interest was not in the slightly artificial crises the producers tried to engineer. Rather it was a pleasure just to hang out with this delightful family (their two boys also came across as well-adjusted troopers) and watch them flourish...