Interior Design Masters review: Sexy, cigarette-smoking nuns make this crafty competition a show to gloss over

Unlike me, the contestants in this competition to find a new interior designer to challenge Laurence Llewelyn Bowen as the country's crown prince of chintz had no difficulty in getting quotes or finding a reliable tradesman to come out when they said they would.

On the contrary, these 10 'novice interior designers' had hot and cold running joiners and painters and decorators on call.

According to judge Michelle Ogundehin – and host Alan Carr, for some reason, insisted on giving her full name every time she was introduced – the programme is “the most intense, immersive course in interior design”.

But judging by the designs in the first episode, the only thing these budding Kelly Hoppens had been immersed in were mild psychotropic drugs.

The designers were taken to a former convent in Norfolk, now run by the charity Emmaus, which helps homeless people into housing and work.

Their brief was to revamp the former nuns' bedrooms into rooms for a new B&B to be run by the charity.

Accordingly, Alan and Michelle Ogundehin told them they should “consider the context and remember who will be staying in these rooms”.

An admonition which fell on deaf ears, as Anthony went back to the 80s and plastered an Athena poster of a sexy, cigarette-smoking nun on a wardrobe, Roisin used reams of floral wallpaper that would give Alan Titchmarsh a headache and Francesca went for a little girl's bedroom aesthetic full of candy stripes and pink.

Ben, meanwhile – who moved from San Sebastian to Wolverhampton, so you can tell his decision-making is not the best – went for an 1870s railway carriage look, complete with 'wood panelling’ created from wallpaper painted brown.

Halfway through, it looked like a dirty protest in a maximum security prison, although Michelle Ogundehin and guest judge Abigail Ahern seemed to like the finished room.

In fact, they made it the episode's 'stand-out space', calling Ben “a real storyteller” and the room “a masterclass in layering”.

Which made me doubt the evidence of my own eyes.

In fact, the only room where you'd want to spend time – and these former nun's cells were only 13ft by six-and-a-half feet – was Matt's, a haven of stone-effect walls, soft lighting and mirrors to give the room an illusion of space.

This show has been going since 2014 – although it was called The Great Interior Design Challenge and was on BBC2, then – and should be familiar to anyone who has watched these crafty challenge shows, whether they be about sewing, pottery, wood-cutting or baking.

And before that was Changing Rooms, which you watched with a bitter kind of schadenfreude as you giggled at the horrors neighbours inflicted on each other.

The contestants are all very supportive of each other, regularly popping in to each other's rooms and wowing at the paint effects.

So much gushing, in fact, that you can't help wondering if it's all as fake as Ben's wood panels.

And to say these are 'novice' interior designers is rather disingenuous. Anthony, apparently, is an interior stylist, Hannah is already an interior designer and Ash is an interior therapist, “creating uplifting designs for her clients' homes”.

It's all a matter of taste, of course, and mine is more mainstream than most, but you can't help hoping that over the course of the series, these designers will rein in their more outre ideas in favour of something their clients might actually like.

Otherwise, Interior Design Masters might end up being a show you have to gloss over.