PICK OF TODAY’S TV

RICHARD HAMMOND’S CRAZY CONTRAPTIONS, 8PM, CH4

THIS new series presented by the former Top Gear host Richard Hammond promises to be a lot of fun — especially for fans of Channel 4’s 1990s/2000s show Scrapheap Challenge or, for those with longer memories, the BBC’s Great Egg Race from the early 1980s. The ‘contraptions’ of the title are chain reaction machines, designed to perform simple tasks in the most complicated way possible. Each week, teams of engineering enthusiasts are challenged to design and build a contraption for a specific purpose — in this opener, to allow Richard to ‘make the bed’ from the comfort of his bath — using only a selection of everyday household implements. The contestants have four days to complete their task, with the result then judged on ingenuity and quality by Zach Umperovitch, the ‘world’s leading authority’ on these devices. There are many examples of Zach’s work to be found on the internet, where they are known as Rube Goldberg machines, Goldberg being the American equivalent of our own Heath Robinson.

On hand to explain the science is the engineer and presenter Dr Shini Somara (pictured with Hammond and Umperovitch). Richard once tried to

well!’ build one him.elf: ‘It didn’t end