Lego Masters is ingenious but its construction is shaky
Icurse Lego on a daily basis. It’s not that I don’t admire the Danish toy brand. I’m a huge fan, not least for the peace and quiet it grants me from my two children. However, I’m forever stepping on errant bricks with bare feet. I’m pretty sure my soles are pockmarked with round indentations in rectangular formations.
Putting our toys and sore tootsies aside, my family sat down together to watch (Channel 4): a hunt for the UK’S best Lego builders. A neat idea, appealing to children and overgrown ones alike. Since a certain other contest launches on Channel 4 imminently, let’s call this The Great British Brick Off.
In the opening round, 48 hopeful duos were whittled down to eight finalists, who were then granted access to the fabled “build room”, boasting a million coloured bricks. “We’ve died and gone to heaven!” gushed one contestant. “Woah!” added my awestruck son.
The standout duos were nineyear-old scamps Guy and Abraham, sarcastic uncle Daniel and his cheeky nephew Jack, and Cambridge University engineering students Jamil and James. The latter were endearingly nerdy but surely can’t win, what with having a degree-sized advantage.
Their first testing task was to create a supersized brick banquet, including a chair that could bear an adult’s weight. Creations included crispy aromatic duck, hog roast, spinning candelabra, a gravity-defying teapot and a toilet throne (complete with, ahem, “contents”). There were triumphs, tears of frustration and genuine tension as chairs crumbled when sat on.
It was lovely to see all ages come together yet it felt uncomfortable when grown-ups criticised the work of children. The wrong teams were eliminated, in my book. That annoying mother and her sheepish son had to go.
The show also suffered from weak personnel. The host was DJ Melvin Odoom, who was no Mel and Sue – nor even a Sandi and Noel. The sole joke in his repertoire was a self-deprecating one at the expense of his own 5ft 4in stature, which soon wore thin.
The judges – Lego design boss Matthew Ashton and structural engineer Roma Agrawal – knew their stuff but were as charismatic as, well, a brick. Presumably producers spotted this problem, because the remaining episodes see celebrities roped in.
The builds were ingenious but the programme constructed around them wasn’t up to the same standard. Still, my family will be back next week to behold more brick wonders. I might invest in some slippers with Legoproof soles.
You can hardly venture into an NHS facility nowadays without finding fixed-rig cameras quietly filming a fly-on-the-ward-wall series. There’s Hospital, 24 Hours in A&E and One Born Every Minute, to name but a few.
Perhaps it’s only logical, then, that the next subject for observational documentary treatment was the vehicle that got patients there in the first place. (BBC One) followed a typical night for West Midlands Ambulance Service.
Despite my misgivings about this overstuffed genre, it made an absorbing, affecting hour. An immersive insight into the stories behind the sirens, lent further drama with snippets of 999 calls and cityscape graphics of ambulance racing between emergencies.
We watched the admirable work of call-handlers in the control room and crews out on the ground. The action began with distraught Joan being coached over the phone to give CPR to her husband Terry, who had collapsed at home from a heart attack. When paramedics Katie and Sarah arrived, they noticed the patient was sprawled in front of a TV showing Casualty.
Paramedics Natalie and Nat agonised over whether to move a woman in advanced labour or risk a home delivery, knowing she’d previously had a stillbirth. Their dilemma acquired added poignancy when Natalie admitted she had a severely disabled child herself after a difficult birth. Natalie was euphoric when a healthy boy was born and she became the first person to hold him.
A youngster was badly beaten with a baseball bat in a post-pub brawl. It turned out to be a dispute over a parking space. In another bizarre case, an elderly man drove his mobility scooter into a duck pond. All human life was here. We witnessed birth, death and resurrection in the space of just two shifts. It sure beats Casualty.