Huge Homes with Hugh Dennis, review: an enjoyable property show but heaven forfend the energy bills!

Channel 4’s long-running series Amazing Spaces takes us inside small builds. Now the broadcaster has gone to the other end of the property scale. Welcome to Huge Homes with Hugh Dennis (More4), nosing around some of Britain’s most sizeable private residences. I shudder to think about their fuel bills this winter. One home in this opening episode took six boilers to heat it up. Perhaps the owner will now wear six jumpers instead.

Dennis began his generously proportioned perambulations at a vast vertical dwelling: Munstead Water Tower, a 40-metre Victorian redbrick edifice looming over the leafy Surrey skyline. Architect Elspeth Beard bought it at auction for £121,000, then spent seven years converting it into her dream home. Her ingenious design has won awards, which were some small recompense for sore legs from trudging up its 140 stairs.

Off the wild coast of Pembrokeshire lay a home worthy of a cat-stroking Bond villain. Thorne Island was a sprawling artillery fortress, surrounded on all sides by craggy cliffs. Businessman Mike Conner is making it entirely self-sufficient, with solar panels and its own tidal power station. With a laudable sense of priorities, he’d turned the gunpowder room into a private nightclub. The only snag? Ravers need a speedboat or helicopter to reach it.

Finally, in Aberdeenshire, Dennis visited 15th-century Cluny Castle – a granite pile, set amid 200 acres of private parkland, which doubled for Balmoral in the 2006 film The Queen. It takes a full day to vacuum its 100 rooms. No wonder housekeeper Jill was so delighted to delegate a few chores to Dennis. When she asked him to clean a crystal chandelier, I feared an Only Fools and Horses-style disaster. Unlike Rodney and Delboy, he proved not to be a plonker.

Did our host only land the job because his first name sounds like “huge”? Were Eddie Large and Sex and the City’s Mr Big on the shortlist? Either way, Dennis made for an excellent guide: wry, inquisitive, fast forming a warm rapport with everyone he met. His other TV gig, panel show Mock the Week, might have been axed but he has a future presenting quirky property programmes. Or house-cleaning at stately homes, at least.

Gently enjoyable, this was Grand Designs on a grand scale. Even the scene-stealing dogs were whoppers. Bumble the Newfoundland and Grimsby the deerhound were both the size of ponies. Well, there’s plenty of room for their baskets by the fire.