Commissions

Greenlit: James May: The Reassembler, BBC4

To find out, James May (fuelled by endless cups of tea) heads into his workshop with thousands of little pieces to assemble some of our most beloved and recognisable objects from scratch to see what it actually takes to get them to work.

Over three episodes stripped over three nights, James will reassemble a whole host of objects which have been carefully taken apart to all their hundreds of individual component parts. From a petrol-powered lawn mower to an electric guitar and an old-style rotary dial telephone, each episode will focus on one object which he will attempt to put back together.

In his workshop he will be faced with the object laid out in all its individual parts, where he will have to work out how to piece it back together, until eventually it is in its full form. In James’ meticulous, fastidious, but ultimately very slow way, he will vigilantly screw every screw and tighten every bolt to rebuild the object, in the hope that it will start first time!

He will revel in the challenge, enjoying every second of it as he shares his memories of the object and his love for it and delivers, in his unique way, a potted history on the thing he is rebuilding and the component parts. If you really want to understand what something is then you have to understand how it works and what makes it work – James is the man to find out, one bolt at a time.

Channel: BBC4

Producer: Plum Pictures

TX: 2016

Source: BBC press release