James May’s Toy Stories (BBC2, 8pm); CSI: Miami (Five, 9pm); Ghosts in the Machine (BBC4, 9pm).
TOP Gear’s James May has a new vehicle and the title – James May’s Toy Stories – holds a clue as to what it’s all about. He’s on a mission to prove that traditional toys are still relevant when he pushes them to the limit in spectacular, supersize challenges.
Proving the best toys don’t always need batteries, his madcap adventures see him using some of the best-loved toys of my generation and reminding everyone that there’s a big kid in all of us.
He and his team will be faced with new challenges. These include attempting to build the world’s first full-sized house made out of Lego, and creating a Plasticine garden and entering it in the Chelsea Flower Show.
May hopes to pit a Scalextric car against a taxi in a 1.6mile race through a busy town centre. And he hopes to build the world’s greatest model train set to link two villages.
He and his family of helpers are planning to build a lifesized bridge entirely out of Meccano in one of Britain’s most historic university cities. In the first of six programmes, May takes model airplanes to a new level when he tries to build and paint a lifesized Spitfire out of Airfix, over three days at the RAF Museum Cosford.
But the venture soon hits problems when it becomes clear that the huge 36ft pieces may not be strong enough, and no one knows how they will fit together.
“For too long now we have regarded the great toys as mere playthings. It’s time to use them to bring people together and achieve greatness. And I bet it’ll be a right laugh as well,” he says.
The series is the latest in a long line of successful TV vehicles for the 46-year-old, who was a professional harpsichord player before his love of motoring led him first into magazine and newspaper columnist roles, before moving to TV as part of the Top Gear trio.
IN CSI: Miami the investigators delve into the seedy side of air travel when called to the airport after the body of flight attendant Suzanne Grady emerges from the baggage carousel.
Tara examines the victim’s body, but when she smells alcohol she realises that Suzanne was inebriated at the time of death. Meanwhile, Ryan examines the route the bags took and Delko and Calleigh process the evidence from the plane. The pair find a discarded cigarette in the bathroom which provides a DNA match to a suspect passenger.
When Natalia and Ryan check the records they find the man sitting in the closest seat was federal air marshal Aaron Nolan, who claims he went to help a passenger in distress at the time of the murder.
GHOSTS in the Machine is for all those who like shows in which things go bump in the night, with a look at the history of the supernatural genre on British television. Well, Halloween is close.
The hour-long documentary features classic ghost stories such as Whistle and I’ll Come to You, and the 1992 drama Ghostwatch.
As well as including a seemingly endless amount of archive footage of these shows, this film features contributions from actors Jane Asher, Kenneth Cope and Bill Paterson, and presenters Sarah Greene and Yvette Fielding.
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