This Old House
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This Old House | |
|---|---|
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| Genre | How-to |
| Creator(s) | Russell Morash |
| Starring | Kevin O'Connor Norm Abram Tom Silva Richard Trethewey Roger Cook |
| Country of origin |  United States |
| No. of episodes | 664, as of 18 June 2005 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 Minutes |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | PBS |
| Original run | 1979 – present |
| Links | |
| IMDb profile | |
This Old House is a magazine and television program which is aired on the American public broadcast network PBS that follows remodeling projects of houses over a number of weeks.
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[edit] Overview
This Old House and its sister series Ask This Old House are often broadcast together as The This Old House Hour (originally known as The New This Old House Hour). Both shows are owned by This Old House Ventures, Inc. and are underwritten by GMC and The Home Depot. This Old House is also underwritten by Andersen Windows, and State Farm Insurance. Ask This Old House is also underwritten by Toro lawnmowers/snowblowers and Bellawood Floors, a division of Lumber Liquidators.
The third series to share the name is Inside This Old House, a retrospective featuring highlights from previous episodes. Old episodes are also shown under the program name This Old House Classics and were formerly shown on The Learning Channel under the name The Renovation Guide. Only the episodes with original host Bob Vila aired under that name. As of 2006, Classics is also carried on the commercial non-broadcast DIY Network.
[edit] History
Begun in 1979 as a one-time, 13-part series on the Boston PBS station WGBH, it has grown into one of the most popular programs on the network. It has produced spin-offs (notably The New Yankee Workshop hosted by Norm Abram), a magazine and for-profit web sites. It was even able to survive a rift with the original host, Bob Vila, who left in 1989 following a dispute about doing commercials and created a similar show.
Steve Thomas took over hosting duties after Vila's departure, remaining with the program from 1989 to 2003. Kevin O'Connor is the current host. Before O'Connor joined the cast, he was a homeowner who appeared on Ask This Old House having problems with wallpaper removal.
[edit] Ask This Old House
Ask This Old House began in 2002 and was spun off from a section of This Old House Magazine of the same name. Readers of the magazine or viewers of the show submit questions about various home repair or improvement projects which are answered by the experts. The regulars on the show are O'Connor, Tom Silva, Richard Trethewey and Roger Cook. Guest experts appear to answer more specialized questions. The show takes place in "the loft" of a rural barn somewhere in the Boston area. Most of the questions are answered in the loft, but one or two homeowners on each episode receive a visit from a specialist from the show to get the project done in the field. There is a humorous feature called "What Is It?" in which the regulars try to guess what an unusual tool does.
[edit] Inside This Old House
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The most recent spin-off of the This Old House franchise is Inside This Old House. It is shown primarily on the A&E Network. The show is very much like Ask This Old House: It is shot mainly in the "loft", hosted by O'Connor and features the regular experts listed above and also Abram (master carpenter). However, unlike Ask This Old House, usually one or two experts are used throughout the episode and a specific theme is discussed. The theme is usually a particular topic (i.e. landscaping, installing doors, etc). Along with the in-house expert, and sometimes a guest expert, clips are shown of past episodes of This Old House (mainly the very old episodes with Vila) to further illustrate the point. A segment called "Inside Out" features one of two guest commentators (Jimmy Dunn or Doreen Vigue) with a brief and comedic overview of what was discussed on the show.
[edit] Cast
[edit] Current cast
As of 2007, the cast is as follows:
- Norm Abram (Master carpenter)
- Roger Cook (Landscape contractor)
- Kevin O'Connor (Host)
- Tom Silva (General contractor)
- Richard Trethewey (Plumbing and HVAC)
[edit] Previous hosts
[edit] Production team
As of 2007, the television production team is as follows:
- Russell Morash (Creator)
- David Vos (Senior Producer and Director)
- Deborah Hood (Producer, This Old House)
- Chris Wolf (Producer, Ask This Old House)
[edit] Trivia
- This Old House was the inspiration for the Tool Time show-within-a-show on the American television situation comedy Home Improvement, in which Tim Allen played a Vila-like character. Bob Vila also guest stars in Home Improvement as Tim's rival and archenemy. A secondary charactor on the series, Al Borland, is also based off of Norm Abram.
- The original theme song for This Old House was "Louisiana Fairy Tale", composed by Haven Gillespie, Mitchell Parish and J. Fred Coots and performed by early 20th-century jazz artist Fats Waller. The theme song was changed after This Old House Ventures acquired the series from WGBH. The current theme song is "This Old House '97" composed by Peter Bell.
- Seattle's skit comedy show Almost Live did a parody called "This Here Place".
- Fox's In Living Color also ran a parody titled "This Old Box" which starred Damon Wayans.
- The Disney Channel's Mickey Mouse Club did a parody called "This Old Home", which featured a house with wood, bricks, and so forth, made out of candy.
- Saturday Night Live has parodied This Old House occasionally. In 2004, Liam Neeson was the guest host of "So You Call This a House, Do Ya?" Supposedly set in Ireland, improvements to the dwelling consisted mainly of emptying all the ashtrays and moving furniture to hide stains on the floor. It ended in a brawl when the homeowner took offense at the repositioning of a particular furnishing. ("Me mother hung that mirror there before she died!"). [1] In 1989, John Larroquette portrayed Bob Vila as This Old House visited a project involving a 1865 Victorian farmhouse built over a sacred Indian burial mound. The episode contained a discussion of walls that sweat blood, correcting random demonic rants and screams, fixing walls full of trapped souls, and hiding a "hellmouth". It ended with the unexplained stabbing death of one of the homeowners. [2]
[edit] External links
- This Old House official website
- This Old House at the Internet Movie Database
- Ask This Old House at the Internet Movie Database
- The TV.com entry on the series
