The most XL thing here is Gregg Wallace’s hyperbole
Honk honk! Gregg Wallace is having his best day ever on Inside the Factory XL: Trains (BBC Two). Wallace loves trains. And because he’s been a very good boy, the driver asks if he’d like a go – not just at sounding the horn, but at driving. “No way!” yelps Wallace. “Seriously?!” They set off and it is pointed out that he’s only doing 10mph and could speed up a bit. But Wallace is happy. Honestly, you’ve never seen a man as happy as this. “Get out of here, I’m driving a train!” he yells, like a three-year-old living out his Thomas the Tank Engine dream.
Wallace’s manic enthusiasm is the hallmark of Inside the Factory (the “XL” refers to this series’ supersize subjects) but here it reached its apex. I worried about his blood pressure. He was beside himself at the scale of the “five-carriage monster” train being put together at the Alstom factory in Derby, even though it seemed a completely normal size. But that’s another thing about this show: it bombards you with figures, like the TV equivalent of a school maths paper.
The factory employs 2,000 people and is making 133 of these 187-ton trains, which reach speeds of up to 100mph and join 3,000 other electric trains on Britain’s high-speed rail network. They’re made using 300kg panels with a 24 x 2.5 metre underframe, put together in a 180-metre long welding shed, to create a train seating 490 people. The more numbers they trotted out, the more meaningless they became. “Each train takes up to one thousand hours to complete.” Is that a lot for the construction of a train? “Each train requires 24 times more paint than a typical car.” Well, yes, because it’s a lot bigger than a car, isn’t it?
Seeing how a train is made is interesting, but every moment was dominated by Wallace’s hyperbole. “That is ludicrous!” he gasped at the sight of some aluminium panels arriving on an articulated lorry, to the bemusement of the factory’s logistics manager. “This is vast, isn’t it? This is massive!” he said about the train’s underframe which was, obviously, exactly the size you would expect a train’s underframe to be if you had ever seen a train. When Wallace learned that the machine which welded metal together got very hot, he seemed astonished: “That is more than 60 times hotter than the hottest setting on my oven!”
At the end, Wallace said his visit to the factory was one of the most amazing experiences of his life.
For viewers, not so much.
If you like your sci-fi disaster thrillers to be clever and complicated, then skip La Brea
(Channel 5/Paramount+). But if you’re happy with cheesy dialogue and characters having to run away from a CGI sabre-toothed tiger after falling into a giant sinkhole that is a portal to a prehistoric dimension, then this is the show for you.
That hole opens up while Eve (Natalie Zea) is doing the school run in Los Angeles with nearly-grown-up children Izzy (Zyra Gorecki) and Josh (Jack Martin). Izzy manages to flee but Eve and Josh fall into another world, where logic does not apply. Why are some of the cars that fell into the hole perfectly intact, but others are not? Why are some people dead but the rest unharmed? Why has the fall not messed up Eve’s hair?
There they meet various stock characters, including an alpha male, a depressed Brit and an aggressive cop. There’s also an Australian slacker (Rohan Mirchandaney) who says: “Maybe we’re just in an episode of
Lost.” Fair play to the writers for acknowledging the debt to that show. But La Brea has nowhere near the same level of inventiveness, and feels as if it’s fitting a series’ worth of plot developments into one episode: shady government officials who know more than they’re letting on, characters being mauled by giant wolves, the discovery of a heroin stash in a car boot.
And then there’s Eve’s estranged husband, Gavin (Eoin Macken), who realises that the visions he’s been having since crashing his plane relate to what’s happening in that parallel dimension. Do we think his former job as the US Air Force’s best fighter pilot might come in handy down the line? You betcha! Gavin is lumbered with the worst lines. “My gut is telling me that something’s going on.” “Your mom and Josh are alive. And I’m gonna find them.” He also has a drink problem, which – combined with his handsome looks – unfortunately brings to mind Ted Striker in Airplane!
All of this means that you can’t take
La Brea seriously. The characters are cutouts, and the primordial predators aren’t remotely frightening because the CGI budget isn’t high enough. It’s not a good show, but perhaps it’s not trying to be – this is popcorn entertainment that will keep you reasonably amused as it barrels along in its own silly way.
Inside the Factory XL: Trains ★★ La Brea ★★