One of my favorite scenes in the Disney/Pixar film Toy Story 2 is the one where Woody, the beloved but worn-out vintage cowboy doll, is painstakingly fixed up and detailed by a man who repairs toys for a living. Loose stitches on his shirt are sewn and Woody's lackluster eyes are polished to a high gloss with a Q-tip. By the end, he's like new. The scene is essentially an on-camera makeover, a cinematic technique I will never tire of.
As fun as it is to watch Andy's glow-up, it's not nearly as satisfying as the real-life transformations on The Repair Shop, the beloved British series that's now available for free on Tubi, where old toys, instruments, furniture and other items are restored to their former glory by an army of expert artisans.
The Repair Shop features skilled craftspeople trained in arts that feel like they're dying out. Leathersmiths, metalsmiths and horologists (this show is even more committed to horology than The Gilded Age's clock-centric latest season -- IYKYK) are tasked with restoring and repairing old family heirlooms.
A horologist repairs an old clock on The Repair Shop BBC One
Episodes often start out like Antiques Roadshow, where a person arrives at the old thatched-roof repair barn and explains the provenance of their beloved, but usually broken, item. The show then morphs into something more akin to Ask This Old House, as we watch the highly trained artists and builders who are called in to work their magic. They match paint colors, sew individual tufts of fur onto stuffed animals or make brand-new wooden table legs match old ones. They preserve the life of beloved items, all while a bed of calming music plays softly in the background.
The Repair Shop has streamed elsewhere in years past. But this month, now that my go-to, soothing comfort show, The Great British Baking Show, has ended, I've turned my attention back to The Repair Shop. In the same way that you often have to wonder how Baking Show contestants know the difference between Swiss and Italian meringue, the stars of The Repair Shop are similarly impressive, as the experts use precision tools to make meticulous, often imperceptible, fixes.
Don't miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.
The show, now in its 15th season, airs on BBC One in the UK. The BBC One website describes it as "a heartwarming antidote to throwaway culture," and I couldn't have put it better. As someone who's into repairs and extending the life of old things (if you need me, I'm usually buried deep in the #VisibleMending and #Kintsugi hashtags on IG), Britain has some great shows dedicated to that theme.
The Repair Shop may be the best known, but two more great ones, Money For Nothing and Saved and Remade, are also on Tubi; you could spend days watching them and getting inspired to save rather than toss your old broken-down stuff. Any time I pass a free pile of old furniture on a curb, I always think, "I could fix that up!" These shows allow me to live vicariously. (I don't have the storage space to realize my dream of being a professional trash flipper, alas.)
The closest thing we have on TV in the US might be HGTV's Flea Market Flip. But it's a very different vibe than its British counterparts, especially because it's a competition series where people resell the items they restore to see who can make the most money.
... continue reading