TV review: Motor Morphers
There's something about seeing a bunch of largely middle-aged men mucking about with bits of machinery that makes entertaining television.
It can be dismissed as just 'boys and their toys' but the good humour of those taking part, their infectious enthusiasm and the wildly silly projects they engage in just makes you smile.
It is, perhaps, a little disingenuous of presenter Jason Bradbury to claim that there is something unique about all this – for more than a decade a very similar Scraphead Challenge provided similar fun on Channel 4. But that doesn't detract from Channel 5's Motor Morphers – despite its terrible title.
A blue team, led by young boffin Ed, and a red team led by hydraulics expert Steve, were asked to turn two 11-ton beet harvesters into demolition machines capable of reducing a reinforced Second World War munitions store to rubble..
For someone with severely limited DIY skills and a knowledge of engineering limited to school metalwork lessons in his dim and distant past, their ability to cannibalise these huge pieces of machinery and produce mechanical dinosaurs capable of turning that munitions store into so many bricks was hugely impressive.
The red team used their beet harvester's hydraulics to build their own set of concrete and brick-eating jaws on the end of what we were told was a 'goose-neck boom'. And it worked, biting great chunks out of the walls of the munitions store.
The blue team were less technical, although their plan seemed to involve Ed filling a blackboard with impressive calculations and diagrams.
They came up with a demolition ball stuck on the front of their beet harvester, although the proper ball turned out to be too heavy.
Instead, they used a big green piece of industrial-sized scrap which promptly started to fall to bits on impact with the munition store walls.
It did the job, though, and won them the day.
It was all carried on with great good cheer, with both teams thoroughly enjoying themselves in an utterly pointless contest for the sheer heck of it.
I can think of many worse ways of whiling away an hour watching television.
It was about as far from last night's edition of Panorama as it was possible to get.
In a sombre recap of what is known of the Hillsborough Disaster, the BBC's premier investigative strand underlined the power of this tragedy to continue to move us after nearly a quarter of a century.
Hillsborough – How They Buried The Truth detailed the huge conspiracy to shift the blame from South Yorkshire Police on to the Liverpool fans and the long battle to uncover the truth of what happened on that April day in 1989.
There was little we hadn't heard before, but that did nothing to dampen the impact this scandal continues to carry.
The most moving testimony came from the families of the victims, lied to, betrayed and left fighting for justice for years until last September's report from the Hillsborough Independent Panel.
Even knowing, at last, most of the truth, it all still beggars belief. Hillsborough was, and remains, a national disgrace and continues to make compelling viewing.
Simon Penfold
