The Re-Inventors
Host
Co-hosts
Historian: James Strawbridge
Engineer: Jim Milner
Broadcast
IWC Media for UKTV History, 11 to 15 December 2006 (5 episodes)
Synopsis
Scrapheap Challenge meets Challenge Anneka, only without a scrapheap and without Anneka. So it's Challenge Challenge, basically.
Father and son team Dick and James Strawbridge are given two days to scavenge materials and build a machine capable of taking on an historical original at a given task. Dick's explanations of how the machines work are clear and comprehensible even by engineering ignoramuses like ourselves, there's a good old dose of historical infomation to satisfy the Antiques Roadshow crowd, and - although this aspect is slightly thrown away - it's really rather exciting to see genuine old machines doing what they were made to do rather than just sitting inert in a museum.
You don't expect an original game show commission from a channel like UKTV History (which usually specialises in back-to-back episodes of The World at War and suchlike) but if you like build-a-machine shows, and don't mind Colonel Dick, this ain't bad.
Trivia
Produced by sometime Endurance UK co-host Stephen Taylor Woodrow
See also
Pictures
Past masters James and Dick