"Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker" (TV show on Roku)

[Von]

My wife and I are fans of the Great British Bakeoff and having finished binged it, have started to watch some of the spin-offs. "Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker" on the Roku Chanel (free with ads) is one such spin-off. Basically a shows with each season involving ten contestants who get whittled down, one per show, to a grand winner. Roku is carrying two of the three seasons that were apparently produced (I believe it's discontinued after the third season). We've finished season two at this point and have just started season three.

Cons: As you might expect when adapting woodworking to be a TV show, any reason you can imagine to hate the show, you will probably find it. The editing is too fast to really appreciate what is going on, the woodworking is dumbed down for a general audience, there artificial drama and arbitrary skills challenges, lots of wood burning which was all the rage for finishing back for a while, and, I infer, limits on what tools can be used. A big oddity is I have yet to see a table saw. From what I've seen contestants get their requested lumber already rough cut.

Pros: They emphasize creativity in design and it's interesting to see what the different contestants come up given the same directions and their different build techniques. The skill level is on average pretty good with the better contestants clearly doing better than I would do.

Here a link to the Wikipedia page which - *spoiler alert* - lists the winners of each season: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handmade:_Britain's_Best_Woodworker

 

 

[Ron Swanson Jr.]

Thanks @Von. Even bad woodworking shows are better than NO woodworking shows in my book! 

Exhibit A; Tommy McDonald