'The Repair Shop' Finally Returns to American Streaming
The cast of The Repair Shop Season 1
BBC
Three major long-running reality series in the U.K. are considered the kings of the genre, where every season is a rating smash. The first, Strictly Come Dancing, which began in 2004, airs on ABC here as Dancing with the Stars. The second, The Great British Bake Off, here known as The Great British Baking Show, thanks to a certain American company's litigious ways, started in 2010 and has graced TVs on both sides of the pond for over a decade. Then, there is The Repair Shop, launched in 2017 on BBC Two, just as the British network lost the rights to Baking Show to Channel 4.
A cross between the BBC's popular long-running Antiques Roadshow (which has been on air since 1979) and Baking Show's "talented artisans earnestly doing what they do best," the series features a few clients per episode showing up with inherited items in need of work, and different skilled craftsmen step forward to fix them. Netflix initially brought over the first couple of seasons as part of its broader strategy of importing BBC Two content wholesale to fill out its Home & Garden section, but the streaming service ended that practice in 2018 as it began producing its own fare, and the show vanished before it could take hold.
Discovery+ then picked it up after the merger with Warner Brothers, as it fit the HBO Max programming structure that included The Great Pottery Throw Down. But by the time the two became Max in 2023, that was all out the window, and The Repair Shop lost to American streaming. But blessedly, as 2024 kicks off, streaming services are stepping in to rescue the various British series that WBD has mishandled, with BritBox grabbing The Repair Shop's first two seasons.
It should be noted that, unlike its two main counterparts in reality royalty, The Repair Shop is not nearly as controlled about how many installments it puts out a year or in its PR cycle. (Strictly is still Top Dog in the U.K. because it never aired more than once a year, unlike Dancing with the Stars, which practically ran the franchise into the ground before it realized twice a year was too much.) After the show ran through its initially contracted first three seasons at 15 episodes a piece, it jumped to 30 and then 40 episodes for Seasons 4 and 5. It might have stayed at that level, too, had the lockdowns of 2020 not had other ideas.
Due to the truncated 2020 filming schedule, Season 6 only ran 14 episodes, and Season 7 was initially only commissioned as 20, with a second 20 commissioned after Lockdown 2. Season 8 ended up with only 14 episodes again due to Lockdown 3. You might wonder why I'm getting into the weeds on this, but the upshot has been that when the series returned to full production, the show started accidentally overlapping itself. The result is that, since 2020, all odd-number seasons run 40 episodes, and all even numbers ones run 14, and none of them ever air in order.
However, that's the beauty of The Repair Shop. It's a little like the BBC's version of Chopped. (Last I checked, Food Network's Basket of Doom show had something like 50+ seasons.) It's addicting, it has tons of episodes, and unlike Strictly or Baking Show, those episodes are evergreen and can be watched anytime in any order.
On top of The Repair Shop's backlog of twelve seasons, which BritBox could easily raid, its upcoming Season 13, due out in 2024, and it's already greenlit Season 14, the series is also one that comes with Christmas specials, The Repair Shop at Christmas has aired on the BBC during the holidays every year save 2018 when unforeseen issues prevented the show from completing filming. BritBox already has The Repair Shop's King Charles special from the BBC's centenary in 2022, and the Make It At Market spin-off.
The Repair Shop is hosted by Jay Blades, furniture restorer and shop foreman at the Weald and Downland Living Museum in Singleton, West Sussex. The regular artisans include
metal worker Dom Chinea, star of Make it at Market; siblings Suzie and Steve Fletcher, leather worker and clockmaker respectively; cabinet maker Will Kirk; upholsterer Sonnaz Nooranvary, the "Bear ladies" toy restorers Amanda Middleditch and Julie Tatchell, ceramics expert Kirsten Ramsay, painting conservator Lucia Scalisi, and photography expert/silversmith Brenton West.
All episodes of The Repair Shop Seasons 1 and 2 debut on BritBox on Thursday, January 25, 2024.
