Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger (2011)

‘Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger was a New Zealand science-based reality television series broadcast on TV3. Each episode saw the two hosts, James Coleman and Greg Page, work to produce a “new and improved” version of a household appliance or object. At the beginning of each episode, the hosts selected their team from a combined pool of five people, four of whom had skills that were of value to the project, and one of whom did not. They then spent the remainder of the day in a shed producing the new device, before holding competitive tests the following morning. The tests were adjudicated by Kirsten Pederson.

Before the series aired, Coleman told news media that the episode in which he attempted to make a clothes drier from a lawnmower engine and an angle grinder was a near-disaster, as “The clothes ended up being distributed in specks of cotton around the laundry and the hooks flew off and embedded themselves around the set,” but “Luckily, they didn’t kill or blind anyone.”

The series was nominated for an Aotearoa Film & Television Award in 2011.