I enjoy this show so much but I totally agree with your criticisms. I wish there was more repair, less drama. I could just spend hours watching nothing but Steve fix clockwork mechanisms.
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Here’s the thing though. The broadcast TV audience is a lot older than the Youtube audience. Those detail oriented programs legitimately do not attract eyeballs on television anymore. Many shows that hewed closer to that have been cancelled for lack of ratings the last decade.
Meanwhile the Youtube channels tend to be short, sub 30 minutes on the longest end. And right along side them run effectively information free almost purely visual series that are part and parcel of the same audience.
Take food series on YouTube (since I watch a good lot of them). Binging with Babish is one of the top viewed series. Episodes are information dense, but typically 15 minutes or less. Right along side that in the top channels is Sous Vide Everything/Gunga Food. Which contains almost zero information. It’s the purest injection of food porn I’ve ever seen. A man talks, and there’s sumptuous images of steak. Then they eat it. And that’s it. It’s just as content free as “traditional” reality TV, the short run time just allows they to skip the stretching.
I’m totally with you on Repair Shop though. I’m really sick of hearing about how everything is super important, and connected to “the war”. I wanna know about the object and what the fuck they’re doing to it. After a bit it’s actually sort funny how vacant the personal stories are, and how much the hosts fill in for people. As if the people would rather say “I want my nice table fixed” but are pressed to come up with a very British explanation of why this is this table is the most important table on the spot.
But this is also why everything is a competition show now. It unifies the audience. The conflict and drama isn’t pure soap opera and something is actually happening. Information actually gets worked it. But it still follows the same after the break, before the break, false cliff hanger structure.
I mean some of the stories are kinda cool when they establish an interesting provenance behind the item being repaired. But, yeah, all too often it’s along the lines of, “I accidentally broke this otherwise tacky heirloom that reminds me of my dead parents and I want it fixed”.
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I don’t even think most of them are that. There’s a lot of very leading work from the hosts.
Host: This is a very special table?
Guest: Yes its a very special table.
Host: And did you get this very special table from anyone important.
Guest: Its… its from my gran?
Host: Oh your gran, your gran was she an amazing woman?
Guest: She survived the war.
Host: What would it mean to have your grans table fixed? It would change everything wouldn’t it?
Guest: Yes it would change everything. It’s from my gran. She survived the war.
Just once I want to see someone say “well we bought it in a boot sale, and my wife hates the way it looks”.
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The show is premised on repairing/restoring heirlooms.
I know what b-roll is, but I can’t help reading that as monetized bog-roll.
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