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5 things to expect from HGTV's new Flip or Flop Fort Worth

Andy and Ashley Williams, Flip or Flop Fort Worth

Andy and Ashley Williams will appear at a watch party in the Fort Worth Stockyards on Thursday, November 2.

Photo courtesy of HGTV

Scoot over, Waco. Fort Worth will step into HGTV's Lone Star State spotlight with the premiere of Flip or Flop Fort Worth on Thursday, November 2 at 8 pm.

A spin-off of the hit Flip or Flop series, the Fort Worth version will star husband-wife team Andy and Ashley Williams — he, a real estate agent and home renovation expert, and she, a designer — as they purchase, renovate, and transform rundown properties into gorgeous family homes throughout the area.

Fans will be tempted to compare Andy and Ashley to Flip or Flop's original hosts, Tarek and Christina El Moussa, and also to the most famous TV fixer upper couple of all time. But the network is promising viewers plenty to love about the new show — including Fort Worth itself.

Here, five things local viewers can expect from Flip or Flop Fort Worth:

1. You'll see neighborhoods you know.

TV shows notoriously mix up Fort Worth and Dallas. But from what we know, this show is not going to pass off Highland Park or Frisco as Fort Worth — although it might step slightly beyond the city limits.

Thursday night's episode restores a cottage in Fort Worth's Arlington Heights. Another takes place in the Burton Hill neighborhood; another, in River Oaks. At least one episode, the pilot — which aired in February as Flipping Texas — renovated a home in Hurst.

The hosts and their kids go "driving for dollars” in their car, they say, spotting houses that are 1) ugly, 2) have high grass, and 3) have mail spilling out of mailboxes. So that leaves it open to any Fort Worth-area neighborhood without a strict HOA.

2. You'll hear a lot about military veterans.

Andy and Ashley say the show is part of their larger commitment to highlight and help military veterans. They often hire veterans to assist on their projects, including landscape designer Andrew Turner, who helps add curb appeal to several homes during the season.

It's not just a mission they're on; it's who they are. The couple met in Baghdad. She served in the Army, and he was a U.S. Marine who later went back to the Middle East as a civilian contractor. Andy has said in interviews that a near-miss with an explosion prompted him to think about life after the military and turned his focus toward real estate.

His Fort Worth-based real estate agency is even called Recon Realty, and Ashley calls her husband "a true recon Marine."

“My check was not cashed. I get to chase my dreams and build a life here at home,” Andy says on HGTV.com. “So I have a fiduciary duty to every Marine before and after me to make sure that service is not a sacrifice. So I continue to serve.”

3. You'll fall in love with the family.

Andy and Ashley have two kids under age 5, Amina and Ashton. They call their family the “A-Team” — and A could stand for adorable. Expect to see the little ones driving around in cars with them, helping to scout flip homes. But don't expect a "Leave it to Beaver" household.

Andy and Ashley describe themselves as strong-minded individuals, and they both can be direct. He admits he takes his frustrations out on highly physical “demo days." She recalls that once, in her transition back to civilian life, a boss criticized her for being too “intense."

Every episode of Flip or Flop requires grace under fire to deal with leaky pipes or botched wiring. We expect them to show it in spades — and then take their kids out for ice cream.

4. Expect to learn about real estate.

When it comes to flipping, Andy and Ashley know what they're doing. They were involved in more than 100 real estate deals and flipped more than 50 homes before HGTV came calling. In fact, they weren't looking for TV fame, they say. While on vacation two years ago, they happened to talk to a man about flipping homes, and he happened to be a TV guy who connected them with the network.

Andy's veterans-focused real estate business was the subject of a recent Forbes magazine article titled, "I Want to Show the World that Entrepreneurs Like Me Can Exist." He bought his first real estate investment at age 22 and developed a strategy but didn't make money right away. It took time, flexibility, patience, and business allies to pull it together. His success prompted the magazine to dub him "the self-made real estate mogul for the Post-9/11 generation."

Cameras or no cameras, Andy and Ashley remain focused on turning a profit. “Our flips can get a bit chaotic,” Ashley says in an HGTV release. “But that’s good when flipping a house because it means things are rolling and you’re getting closer to selling the home for top dollar.”

5. Expect to see another season.

The first season is just nine episodes, but HGTV is throwing some serious marketing heft behind it, with stories running in national publications and trailers running all over the network's website.

This is not a regional venture, it seems.

We don't yet have news of a second season. But with that other Texas-based HGTV show fixin' to start its last hurrah, Flip or Flop Fort Worth could earn the lone star on the HGTV map.

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A free premiere watch party will take place starting at 7 pm Thursday, November 2 on the lawn of the Stockyards Exchange Building, 131 E. Exchange Ave., Fort Worth. It will include family-friendly games, a screening of the show, and Q&A with stars Andy and Ashley Williams. Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs. For more information visit www.FortWorth.com/WatchParty.

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Movie Review

Oscar-winning director visits WWII era in melodramatic film Blitz

Photo courtesy of Apple TV+

Elliott Heffernan and Saoirse Ronan in Blitz.

The horrors of World War II are 80+ years in the past, yet they remain a fascination for many filmmakers. The latest film to tackle the era, Blitz, is centered around the German Blitzkrieg air raids on London in September 1940, but uses a more personal story to illustrate its impact.

Rita (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her 9-year-old son George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father Gerald (Paul Weller) in the lower class neighborhood of Stepney, but no one in the city is immune from the bombs being dropped by the Germans. The government has opened up some of the Underground (aka subway) tunnels for residents to use as bomb shelters, but the haphazard nature of their availability leads Rita to send George to safety in the countryside to protect him.

George, who is biracial, experiences racist abuse on the train, and instead of remaining with the other children to their destination, he jumps off and tries to make his way back to London. Meanwhile, Rita is doing her best to keep her mind off of George’s absence, working at a munition factory and volunteering at a bomb shelter, not knowing that George has put himself back in danger.

Written and directed by Steve McQueen, the film should be one that elicits emotions relatively easily, with ordinary people dealing with the effects of war and a mother separated from her only child. And while all the elements are present, there’s that certain something missing that leaves the story somewhat uninvolving. McQueen makes you want to see George make it back safely and for Rita to be reunited with him, but there is a degree of sentimentality that’s missing from the film as a whole.

Instead of going down that road, McQueen puts a big focus on the racism and bigotry experienced by various people in the film. Flashbacks give a sense of what George and his dad, Marcus (CJ Beckford), went through prior to the war, and Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a warden who tries to help George find his way home, encounters it multiple times while just doing his duty. While McQueen’s point that people of color still had to endure acts of hatred in a time when people should have been coming together, his methods of showing it are often heavy-handed.

Still, the film is well-made and remains visually engaging throughout. The combination of practical sets and CGI put the viewer right in the middle of the bombed-out London, and there are few missteps with how the city is presented. And even though the main mother-son story is only lightly effective, the trials and tribulations that each go through individually are interesting and occasionally suspenseful.

Ronan is a fantastic actor who might get nominated for an Oscar yet again for her other recent film, The Outrun, but this role pales in comparison. Whether it’s because the 30-year-old is a bit young to be fully believable in a mother role or because of the storytelling missteps, she’s merely good instead of great here. Heffernan does a solid job in his film debut, reacting ably to McQueen putting him through his paces.

Blitz joins the seemingly never-ending well of stories from World War II, and while it doesn’t succeed as mightily as other notable war films, it never becomes anything less than watchable. The family story at its center could have been more heartfelt, but McQueen is still a great filmmaker with a flair for visual composition.

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Blitz is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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