“It’s all looking a bit more lawnmowery” said James May as he entered the eighth hour of putting back together a 1959 Suffolk Colt from the 331 separate parts. Not a phrase that your super skilled technicians would use, but then his BBC4 programme, The Reassembler, shown last Monday was not intended to be anything other than a gentle monologue from a tea-sipping bloke in shed, wearing a dodgy jumper consulting a moth-eared manual. I can’t imagine that a similar programme involving IKEA flat pack bunk beds from instructions written in Swinglish might have had the same appeal - but at least all the parts were here.
Robert Pirsig, the author of the cult best seller from the 1970s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance described its purpose as an ‘exploration of the metaphysics of quality, but little about motorcycles’
Well, here the programme slowly provided an insight into the craft of our mower makers. Yes, it was a reflection of a bygone age. Here was a machine constructed in its entirety, engine and all. May showed how paper or card was used to test the setting of the cylinder – and interwove the programme with some delicious old footage including a Flymo commercial shot in a untidy garden with the voice-over “Flymo, so light that even a woman can use it, something that men have been seeking for years!”.
The programme was scheduled head-to-head with a new primetime series on BBC1 from the writers of the current crop of Scandi police dramas. I was encouraged to watch that first before turning to the watch the recorded James May programme. What a relief! From brooding, low light, set pieces where the plot (yet to show its face) was unfathomable, to a garden shed with May surrounded quite deliberately by camera operators and sound recordists in shot, who were often given a name check “Shall I hit this with a hammer, Sarah?” said May when faced with a reluctant gudgeon pin.
For all his antics on Top Gear, James May came across as a wonderfully relaxed and self-deprecating presenter. With his beard and shaggy look (imagine a younger Bristolian version of Billy Connolly), May revealed that his love of all things mechanical started at the age of 12 when he was allowed to drive the family motor mower “I used to jump out of bed in the morning and rush to mow the lawn, no matter that I had last cut at 6 the previous evening. Not a blade of grass was ever safe in our household”.
The denouement, the acid test, of his ten hours (reduced to 30 minutes) reassembling the Suffolk Colt took place out in his yard was when he pulled the starter cord. He assured us that was a one-shot take, and after a couple of pulls and carb tickling, the machine burst into life.
The Reassembler was a 2016 version of programmes like One Man and his Dog which proved, if proof was needed, that the simple things in life, nostalgia, curiosity about how things work still resonate with a large swathe of public trying to get to grips with today’s fast-moving technology and too-clever by half TV programming.
Watch The Reassembler on I-Player
