Television series
Good Bones
- Action
- Light-hearted
A mother-daughter demolition crew tears into Indianapolis's most neglected houses and, week by week, turns them into something sellable and, more often, something lovable. Karen brings the deadpan skepticism, Mina brings the vision and the sledgehammer swagger, and the whole thing runs on genuine family friction rather than manufactured drama. It's comfort television with sawdust on it — for anyone who likes their home renovation shows a little scrappier and a lot more Midwestern.
Should you watch it?
Watch it if you like watching a rundown house get gutted and rebuilt room by room, with the buying, budgeting and family labor all part of the fun.
Skip it if you need a show with cliffhangers or big stakes, because this one runs on a familiar formula of buying, gutting and reveals that repeats across nine seasons.
What it asks of you: Each episode runs an hour across a 105-episode run, so it suits background company or a long binge, and it stays easygoing rather than tense.
Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.
If you liked this
Fixer Upper2014
The show that built the modern renovation-TV template: a married couple, a distinctive aesthetic, and houses transformed from forgettable to enviable. If you like watching a vision get executed, this is the gold standard.
But Chip and Joanna's shiplap-farmhouse look has been so thoroughly copied it can feel like the default rather than a style now.
Rehab Addict2010
Nicole Curtis restoring genuinely old, genuinely falling-apart houses with a preservationist's stubbornness rather than a flipper's calculator. Similar Rust Belt grit to Good Bones, minus the polish.
But Slower and more history-lecture-y than Good Bones — less demo-day spectacle, more architectural salvage.
Property Brothers2011
Twin brothers, one charming realtor and one contractor, doing the buy-and-renovate dance with easy chemistry. It's the most purely relaxing version of this genre.
But Formula is airtight to the point of predictability — you'll know the beats of the episode within the first five minutes.
Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Good Bones
The wildcard
Something you would not have found on your own.
Detropia2012
Good Bones sells the feel-good version of urban renewal, one pretty house at a time; Detropia shows you the economic wreckage that makes those houses cheap enough to flip in the first place.
A documentary about Detroit's Rust Belt collapse — the depopulation, the abandoned factories, the houses nobody's flipping because nobody's buying. It's the sober, structural version of the story Good Bones tells as triumph.
But No makeovers, no satisfying reveals — just a clear-eyed, sometimes bleak look at what 'revitalization' actually costs a city.
More like this (8)
Home Town2017
Erin and Ben Napier reviving their small Mississippi town one house at a time, with the same hometown-pride mission Mina and Karen have for Indianapolis, just gentler.
But Sweeter and slower-paced — if you liked the Good Bones sibling squabbles, this one's almost conflict-free.
Flip or Flop2013
Higher stakes, more visible profit margins, and a couple who bicker over budgets the way Karen and Mina bicker over everything else. Pure flip-show mechanics.
But More transactional than sentimental — houses here are investments first, homes a distant second.
Bargain Block2021
A Detroit-based duo flipping cheap, dilapidated houses into affordable homes for actual first-time buyers — the same Rust Belt-revival spirit as Good Bones, with a sharper social conscience.
But Lower budgets mean less jaw-dropping transformation and more scrappy, make-it-work solutions.
Windy City Rehab2019
Chicago flips with real financial drama and real interpersonal fallout between the hosts — if you want the messier, less-scripted-feeling cousin of Good Bones, start here.
But The behind-the-scenes drama between the stars occasionally overshadowed the houses, and it shows.
Married to Real Estate2022
A husband-and-wife team handling design and dealmaking with the kind of easy, teasing partnership that echoes Karen and Mina's dynamic, just with a marriage instead of a mother-daughter bond.
But Newer and less distinctive — still finding its own identity outside the genre's well-worn grooves.
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition2004
The tearjerker granddaddy of the genre — full-house builds for families in crisis, with an emotional register Good Bones only occasionally dips into.
But Dated production style and unapologetic manipulation of feelings; it wants you crying by minute forty, every time.
This Old House1979
Every demo-day montage and reveal shot in Good Bones descends directly from this show's format — watching it is seeing the genre's rough, unglamorous ancestor before HGTV added the gloss.
The PBS show that invented the entire home-renovation genre — unhurried, technical, more interested in how a joist works than in dramatic before-and-afters.
But Glacially paced and personality-light by modern standards; there's no sibling banter to carry you through the slow parts.
House1977
Good Bones' whole premise is that old houses hide bad secrets behind good bones; Hausu takes that idea and turns it up to a shrieking, technicolor extreme, literalizing the house-as-menace metaphor renovation shows only gesture at.
A gloriously deranged Japanese horror-comedy about a house that literally devours the people inside it, told through the wildest, most surreal visuals a haunted-house movie has ever produced.
But It's aggressively strange — psychedelic editing, cartoonish gore, zero interest in realism — a hard swerve from anything on HGTV.
People
Cast
Recommended by
Fixer Upper, Home Town, Married to Real Estate, Home & Family