Hotel Inspector: a charming British B&B makeover show, now streaming free

I was recently staying a few nights in a place that had a TV but no cable, nor were most of the streaming services set up. It was a Samsung TV, so it defaulted to the company’s streaming service, Samsung TV Plus, because every company needs a confusingly named streaming service.

As I flipped through its channels, I spotted something I’d never heard of right underneath the Hell’s Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares channels: The Hotel Inspector, a series from Channel 5 in the UK.

From the Internet, I learned that The Hotel Inspector has been on since 2005, and is still on air, now in its 17th season.

That means it premiered just a year after Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, which is still my favorite Gordon Ramsay show, because he was not yet in Gordon Ramsay: Fox TV Character mode.

But The Hotel Inspector is an even better show.

In each episode, the hotel inspector—Ruth Watson and her colorful coats in the first three seasons, and then Alex Polizzi—visits a small hotel or B&B in need of help.

The properties are charming, and so, usually, are their owners and staff, though there’s occasionally disagreement and conflict, British-style.

The biggest squabble I’ve seen came during a discussion and disagreement about—seasonal pricing! During that, the owner of Beech House Hotel, Michael, yelled at Ruth, “I can honestly say that is not true. It is a load of lies!”

To make productions cheaper, American versions of these shows tend to blow in and out in a couple days. Some real change can happen in that time, and the newest iteration of Restaurant: Impossible emphasizes that.

But The Hotel Inspector’s visits span months.

During their first visit, Ruth or Alex stay overnight, and inspect everything from the bathrooms to the breakfast (don’t lie about fresh squeezed orange juice!).

Ruth or Alex leave the owners and staff with tasks, and after weeks have passed, check back in. While a space or room may be renovated—with the production paying for that—it’s not a hurricane of changes.

Most episodes lead toward some kind of inspection, perhaps to be rated with stars or to get included in a guidebook, and/or often an event or relaunch.

Both Ruth and Alex offer thoughtful recommendations and creative ideas: shifting from a B&B to an event space, focusing on the restaurant instead of the horrifically dated and tattered rooms.

With its Trading Spaces-ish opening sequence and Mole-ish espionage movie soundtrack with blaring brass instruments, it’s certainly a trip back to a different time in reality TV’s life.

In many ways, the early The Hotel Inspector episodes I’ve seen felt under-produced, so the narrator has to fill in a lot of gaps for us, even mid-conversation, but I prefer that over, say, force-feeding lines to cast members.

Besides their creativity in solving problems, they have a fascinating mix of empathy and castigation to the owners, who sometimes need a wake-up call, and sometimes realize how dire things are.

Ruth tells two owners that “your figures make very woeful reading,” and tells an owner, “you’re a dear, dear man, but this is dreadful.” She tells another, “there’s one thing I found utterly loathsome.”

Ruth Watson is sharp and direct, as is Alex Polizzi, and both have their own versions of incredulity and humor.

“That pubic hair is symbolic of everything that is wrong,” Alex said in one episode, when she came back and found the exact same hair in the same place. “If this was my hotel, I promise you I would have a fucking nervous breakdown.”

As the years go on, the show injects a few more gimmicks. But those are so understated compared to American shows that it’s almost comical.

In one episode, Alex hands the owners of a restaurant piles of cash, and instructs them to throw them in the fire. They dutifully do, and after explaining that’s how much money they’re wasting, she reveals—surprise!—that the money wasn’t real, and that was just a metaphor, phew. “I’m absolutely gobsmacked,” someone says.

Like other FAST channels (Free Ad-Supported TV), Samsung TV Plus isn’t offering every Hotel Inspector episode ever, but a selection of episodes that stream constantly and repeat occasionally. (If you have a Samsung TV, you have it streaming 24/7. If you don’t, you can watch online, free.)

I saw the Safari Hotel episode several times during my stay, while others are still brand new to me. But I’m glad to dip in even to now-familiar episodes, because it’s just such fun to luxuriate in these spaces, their problems, and the inspectors’ solutions.