To The Manor Bowen — Season 1, Episode 2: Money
Reality • 60 min • 1 season, 8 episodes
Episode synopsis
Jackie Llewelyn-Bowen’s has moved Laurence, Cecile (11) and Hermione (8) to a 400 year old manor house in Gloucestershire, to escape the rat race and live the rural dream. It’s Laurence’s job to turn the 20 tatty rooms he now owns into a 21st century designer residence. Laurence wants to make it the ultimate expression of Llewelyn-Bowen design, but first he has to get round the local planning department. His 17th Century home is Grade 11 listed, so celebrity designer or not, Laurence’s scheme needs their thumbs up before he can start work. Not only does the scheme prove tricky with the authorities it also gives Jackie’s budget a bit of a bashing when the estimate comes back with a whopping 50,000 grand over what she has in the bank. But Jackie has her own financial weak spot, the garden and while Laurence’s interiors are stalled, she gets on with hiring some muscled men to do her bidding in the flowerbeds. Laurence has already had to pay to move his design team, Jackie’s office, Jackie’s PA and family, out to Gloucestershire and is feeling the pressure. Faced with spiralling costs, he starts dreaming up other moneymaking schemes to get him out of their financial hole. What about a haunted tour to visit the resident ghost? All he has to do is find one, and he calls in Johnny Depp’s physic to do just that!
About To The Manor Bowen
To The Manor Bowen follows Changing Rooms design guru Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and his wife Jackie, their two idiosyncratic kids, batty old grandma and their eccentric entourage to the heart of the English countryside in their quest to buy a grand new home. Jackie is tired of the London celebrity treadmill and is on a mission to get her family and staff to move to the country in search of the simple life. Laurence, a Londoner through and through, is less enthusiastic. But undeterred Jackie finds herself a run down 17th century manor house in the West Country and buys it. Luckily Laurence loves it too, and put his reputation, finances and family’s happiness on the line by moving everyone into this rundown rural ruin while they attempt to transform it into a magnificent family home. The beautifully surprising and refreshingly unpredictable Llewelyn-Bowens open their normally tightly-bolted celebrity doors to give us a peek at their unconventional and unruly family life.