Boatyard

A ten-part series screened on Discovery Realtime TV

  At last, reality is injected into TV coverage of boating...

Tom Cunliffe presents a series created by Century Aspect Films for Discovery Real Time about  the tribulations and triumphs of five ordinary guys tackling major boat renovations on limited budgets.  Their vessels vary from a 1930s classic yacht to a jet-craft of unknown  origin.  Venues include a Yorkshire council estate, a Norfolk farmyard and the legendary Eel Pie Island.  The owners are an eclectic bunch of characters too.  There’s a north-country ‘man-who-can’ with a scrapyard in his back garden, two brothers-in-law testing their family ties alongside their technical skills, a company director with the soul of an engineer, a Thames river-man and a sailing chef.  All find their fortitude plumbed to the depths, and Cunliffe ties the whole thing together in his own inimitable style.  The ten half-hour episodes run back-to-back in pairs so you can follow a complete project across an hour.  After this, nobody could imagine boats are for the privileged few again.

Boatyard has been re-run several times since Christmas 2005.