'The Repair Shop' Finally Returns to American Streaming
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.
