He’s exploring the stone barn enclave that is Closeburn Lodge with Francis Whitaker of Mason & Wales Architects. The view he’s going bananas about is of Lake Wakatipu. It’s a pathologically enthusiastic tone that doesn’t let up as Spencer, of Love It or List It fame, strings together superlatives, coming to terms with architecture in the Aotearoa landscape.

Views are a recurring theme. See architect John Irving at Cliffhanger House on the Hibiscus Coast: “So, this is the wow moment here with the view. You sort of get drawn to it, like moths to the light.” Spencer sees the view as an expression of a staycation lifestyle. He is also taken by the materiality. “There’s an awful lot of concrete. I see quite a lot of steel. It’s quite moody and dark and masculine.” Moods, often “masculine”, feature large in the series, too.

I’m always fascinated by what happens when mainstream media meets architecture, especially when the collision involves a non-expert taking on the role of architectural critic. Spencer joins an eccentric lineage that runs from then Prince Charles’ infamous carbuncle speech to our own Matthew Ridge (Designing Dreams) and always, of course, Kevin McCloud, who became a celebrity with Grand Designs.

The result is that the critique can be, well, overly reductive and cliché heavy.

Spencer follows three main lines of inquiry — views, moods and that old favourite, indoor-outdoor flow. His big-picture analysis: “The challenge is to complement this dramatic landscape, not try to compete with it because, let’s face it, you are never going to win.”

Some of the examples are entertaining. At Piha House, architect Daniel Marshall likens the home to a bulldog sitting and facing the sea. “The landscape is saying, ‘You want to take me on?’” Spencer agrees that the house stands staunch for extreme events. “It’s all sleek, calm, cool, dark.”

At Clifftops in Takapuna, a collaboration by architects Pete Bossley and Finn Scott, the talk is about the undulating floating timber ceiling and the curved, “slow” stair. Spencer brings out some favourite adjectives: “masculine, luxurious, indulgent, yet extremely tasteful”. Mood. “Just off the charts, completely off the flipping charts.”

Lake House, by architect Anna-Marie Chin, is on the banks of Lake Hayes in Queenstown. “That amazing view — the lake, the mountains. It’s just wow,” raves Spencer. “It feels theatrical – dark walls, metallics, unusual use of textures and these intense spots of colour. It feels incredibly modern. It feels like a Bond villain’s lair.” Goodness.

There is a lot of talk of luxury lifestyles. “First impression, this feels like a super-cool Mediterranean beach club,” he says of the Andrew Patterson-designed Local Rock House on Waiheke Island. “This could be the south of France, could be in Spain.”

But the prize-winner in this category is undoubtedly the 1500sqm Copper House in Queenstown, also by Anna-Marie Chin. Media room, pool, gym, golf simulator, massage room, sauna, steam room and lift. “The pool, the glass, the sky and the lake… This is just blowing my mind. Overwhelmed. I really am… I’ve never seen anything like this before and it’s not just the opulence; it’s the scale.”

Country House in the City in Parnell, with a seriously planned garden, including sculptures, fruit trees and putting green, has architect and presenter in a descriptive duet. Spencer: “It feels like I’ve walked into a giant, elegant glasshouse… a very liveable house.” Architect Andrew Patterson: “Yes, it reeks of being used.”

At Family Retreat in Waimauku, which opens onto a pool and a pond, architect Jo Craddock talks about how architecture can transform a moment and a mood. “Something about this place makes me feel happy, feel good, feel instantly joyful.” To which Spencer, who never stops smiling, adds: “It’s a house that makes you smile.”

It’s a relief that the series includes several more-modest homes. Owner and architect Guy Tarrant’s Courtyard House in Point Chevalier deals with a tricky triangular site. “I thought about it as a secret walled garden,” says Tarrant. “I wanted people to be intrigued as they walked past.”

One of the best surprises is Swallow Point, the home of architect Noel Lane, set among the massive sculpture park with imported wildlife — water buffalo, ostrich, giraffe — of Alan Gibbs’ farm in Kaipara. In this surreal landscape, Swallow Point is surprisingly low key.

“It’s not a beach house and it’s not a farmhouse. It’s a country coastal thing and I was trying to understand what that meant architecturally,” says Lane. For him, it means a series of tentlike structures — luxury living in nature. “Noel wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia for simpler times — family camping holidays tents by the beach,” says Spencer. Well, sort of.

Lane throws open a huge sliding wall to the bedroom. “Sleeping under a fly in the bush — bloody brilliant.” Spencer is, unsurprisingly, gobsmacked. “Never, ever have I been in a home anywhere in the world where so much of the outside is in — even to the extent of outside furniture being indoors!”

Spencer’s gee whizz style makes the show a bit less architectspeak and more real estate supplement. But one result is that architecture comes out of its elitist bubble to parade its wares in front a much wider audience. Like architecture in Aotearoa, New Zealand’s Best Homes has its moments.