How did we get here with Stacey Solomon? When the ash finally settles, we might find that the true legacy of The X Factor is actually the TV presenters it generated along the way, not the “musicians”: Stacey Solomon, Olly Murs, the national treasure that is Rylan. I would argue that staring into a camera and quickly saying “coMING UP!” in a slick way is a rarer skill set than having a good singing voice and just enough charisma to get on stage. This is why we give Ant and Dec a TV award every single year, because they are two of about six people in the country capable of doing it. Any idiot can spend too long singing the opening line of Feeling Good. About 20 people on the planet can keep your attention long enough to get through the terms and conditions of a phone-in competition.
Anyway, here’s Sort Your Life Out With Stacey Solomon, which is – and I do not say this lightly – perfect television. Look at the title again: perfection. Look at the fact that it’s on BBC One: perfection (on Channel 4, a show like Sort Your Life Out would be dogged with “recapification” due to the ad breaks, and would suffer directly. On the BBC it is one clean run through, 58 minutes of uninterrupted TV). Look at the host, and realise she was born for this role. Look at the concept. Perfect, perfect, perfect.
If you missed April’s pilot, it’s fairly straightforward: Solomon drives to your home along with three (perfect) helpers, and sorts your life out. They take all of your possessions from your house and lay them out in a warehouse. They make you spend two days confronting your past, your present and your hoarding compulsions, and put things in the “RECYCLE” pile if they can be recycled. They clean your bathroom with hard work and vinegar, and fit some new handy, MDF-style cupboards to that weird little alcove you don’t know what to do with. They make you sell your belongings at a car boot sale for a surprising amount of money.
We are all now familiar with Marie Kondo’s philosophy of organisation – only keep things if they spark joy, and also, if you actually fold them you can get more T-shirts in a drawer. Solomon presents a similar but identifiably British version: get a label-maker, only keep your kids’ revision books if your youngest might need them one day and, yeah, absolutely keep your wedding photos.
Where Netflix presents us with newly organised families in white linen marvelling at their cleared out homes as a soft wind ripples their steamed-clean curtains, Solomon makes them slog two days in a warehouse in hoodies and leggings, sobbing over old Stickle Bricks. You keep expecting Mrs Hinch to come in and threaten them with a kneecapping if they don’t clear that freezer out, now.
It doesn’t make sense that this show is as good as it is. One reason is there is not an ounce of fat on the thing: while Solomon makes the families confront just how many bottles of nail polish they have, helpers Iwan (cleaner, but not in a “clean freak” way), Dilly (organiser, but not in an “organiser freak” way), and Rob (lightning-brained carpenter) are feverishly making over the home. Where other shows might dwell too long and too patronisingly on cleaning tips, Iwan takes about three seconds to explain what he’s doing to that oven tray with a dishwasher tablet. Rob’s putting some storage in under the bath, and before you ask – yep, there’s an on-screen tip telling you what MDF to buy so it doesn’t warp when exposed to steam. And here’s Dilly, look, decanting rice into a jar and labelling the instructions on the back. Actually that is smart, isn’t it? Perhaps … perhaps I should sort my life out.
But it’s Solomon who makes this: she’s just so palpably, overwhelmingly likable. In the first episode, each helper arrives at the house separately and they all greet her with a genuine, beaming hug. This week’s family seem besotted with her, and I am convinced they all stay in touch on WhatsApp still, months after the event. She does an astonishing amount of to-camera pieces from the front seat of her car, avoiding drizzle, and looks genuinely flustered while putting a fleece throw over an old sofa. She teases Rob for carpentering too slowly and playfully explains to a teenager how her new peg wall makeup display works ([Stacey Solomon gentle voice] “The mirror has a little light on it” [Stacey Solomon cartoon dog voice] “GREAT FOR SELFIES!”). Yes, The X Factor gave us Little Mix, Bad Boys by Alexandra Burke and the Harry Styles Vogue cover. But Sort Your Life Out might be the best of the lot.
Sort Your Life Out With Stacey Solomon is on at 8pm on 4 November on BBC One
