| Season 8 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#10 |
Paint and Wallpaper |
25th Feb 2024 |
8 months ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 10 - "Paint and Wallpaper"
Gregg Wallace explores the Farrow & Ball factory in Dorset to learn how they produce up to 200,000 litres of paint and 10,000 metres of wallpaper a week. They make 270 different coloured paints, but Gregg is learning how they make ‘sulking room pink'.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers how a key ingredient in the paint-making process is mined at a huge china clay mine in Devon and learns the art of hanging wallpaper at a DIY school.And Ruth Goodman is in the Lake District, exploring the history of wallpaper, and visits Portsmouth to uncover the extraordinary story of how ships in the First World War were painted with dazzling patterns to evade German submarines.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#9 |
Sofas |
18th Feb 2024 |
9 months ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 9 - "Sofas"
Gregg Wallace explores the HSL factory in West Yorkshire to find out how they make more than 5,000 sofas every year. The huge site has 250 staff dedicated to furniture making. Gregg is following the production of one of their best-selling sofas, the Burros Classic in indigo.Cherry Healey learns about the science of light bulbs to create the perfect environment to snuggle up on the sofa and visits a foam factory to see how comfy padding is produced in just a few minutes.Historian Ruth Goodman takes a front row seat to discover the history of the sofa and stitches together the fascinating story of one of the world's most famous sewing machines.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#8 |
Chocolate Bars |
11th Feb 2024 |
9 months ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 8 - "Chocolate Bars"
Gregg Wallace is in the UK's city of chocolate, York, exploring how the Nestle factory makes more than 8 million bars of chocolate every day. The bar he's following is the one packed full of bubbles - the peppermint-flavoured Aero.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is in the Berkshire countryside, learning how a cocoa plant quarantine facility is preventing a worldwide chocolate shortage. And historian Ruth Goodman is serving up the bitter history of drinking chocolate.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#7 |
Carpets |
4th Feb 2024 |
9 months ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 7 - "Carpets"
Gregg Wallace explores the Axminster factory in Devon to reveal how 46,000 square metres of carpet are produced every year. He follows the production of one of their best sellers, the Havana Diamond Steel wool carpet.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits the Good Housekeeping Institute to learn the science behind the best ways to remove stubborn stains from carpets, pitching her home remedies against the expert's methods to tackle stains from butter, milk and red wine.And historian Ruth Goodman learns how the groundbreaking methods of a Devon-based carpet maker in the 18th century revolutionised intricate carpet making and explores the rise and fall of the hard-wearing flooring linoleum.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#6 |
Bath Bombs |
28th Jan 2024 |
9 months ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 6 - "Bath Bombs"
Gregg Wallace visits the colourful and fragrant Lush factory in Dorset to learn how an astonishing 14 million bath bombs are produced every year.Cherry Healey visits Loughborough University to learn how taking a hot bath can provide some of the benefits of exercise, and she visits a cutting-edge lab which grows human skin for cosmetic testing.Historian Ruth Goodman explores a time when complex perfumes were thought to ward off the plague and learns how the living conditions of coal miners and their families were transformed with the introduction of communal showers.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Stout |
23rd Jan 2024 |
9 months ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 5 - "Stout"
Gregg Wallace explores the secrets of the Guinness brewery in Dublin to reveal how it makes two million litres of Irish stout every single day.Cherry Healey visits a water treatment centre to learn how reservoir water is treated to provide clean drinking water to the people of Dublin, as well as to the stout brewery. And she visits a farm in Worcestershire to help with the hop harvest.Historian Ruth Goodman delves into the history of Irish pubs and explores the extraordinary story of how pub games helped the Allies in the Second World War.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Stuffed Pasta |
16th Jan 2024 |
10 months ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 4 - "Stuffed Pasta"
Gregg Wallace explores the Dell Ugo factory in Hertfordshire to reveal how it makes 500 million stuffed pasta parcels every year.He's following production of one of their best sellers, crab and crayfish raviolo, and where better place to start than at the intake bay with a delivery of frozen crayfish tails. Factory manager Cesra Da Rocha explains that they receive around half a tonne a week of the freshwater crustacean, enough to make over two hundred thousand individual raviolo, the slightly bigger cousin of ravioli.The delivery is wheeled over to the factory's kitchen area, where Gregg meets one of the owners, Charlie Ugo. Charlie tells Gregg that, along with crayfish, the other key ingredient is crab. They use a mixture of both white and brown crab meat to balance out the flavours. Before the crab goes into the mixer, Gregg helps to add parsley and coriander, mayonnaise, salt and the crayfish. Then in goes the crab, followed by blue whiting, which is a fish from the same family as cod and haddock, adding a fish stock flavour and texture. Then it's lobster stick and lemon juice, followed by some very specific mixer timings: 32 seconds in one direction, then 32 in the other. Breadcrumbs are added, and it's all precisely mixed again.With the filling made, it's time for the pasta, made from special flour milled from durum wheat, which is higher in protein than traditional flour. When the flour is mixed with water, the proteins within the flour combine to form strands of gluten which turns it into dough. The more protein, the more strands are formed and the stronger the dough will be. The factory needs a strong dough to withstand the rigorous processes used to turn it into raviolo. At this factory, they make fresh pasta dough, which requires egg. The ingredients are combined with water, but the mix is nothing like a finished dough yet; it's too dense, so it's sent through a specialist machine which folds and kneads it to make it stretchier, before a set of rollers creates two separate continuous sheets of pasta. After passing through two more sets of rollers, the pasta is eventually taken down to the perfect thickness for making into parcels.With the pasta made and the filling ready, it's time to make the raviolo with the help of another clever machine. Gregg watches on as the two pasta sheets enter a stuffed pasta-forming machine. As they pass through, 15 grams of the fishy filling are deposited at precisely spaced intervals, before the pasta is pressed together and cut out by a roller at a rate of 280 a minute. Then the stuffed pasta parcels are sent through a tunnel, where they're blasted with steam, pasteurising them. The pasteurisation process not only kills microbial activity to extend shelf life, it also sets the gluten stands within the pasta dough, holding them in place and stabilising the shape. Then it's a quick journey through a drier and into a giant chiller, which brings their core temperature to below four degrees Celsius.Finally, ten raviolos are portioned into individual packs, and they head to the dispatch area, where they're loaded into waiting lorries before being sent the length and breadth of the UK.Elsewhere, Cherry Healey visits Cromer on the Norfolk coast to discover the traditional fishing techniques still used to catch the crab for Gregg's stuffed pasta; and she conducts an intriguing experiment to find out if the music we listen to can affect how we taste food.Historian Ruth Goodman learns how Italian immigrants in Bedford helped to build Britain, and she tucks into the extraordinary origins of gluten free food
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Jeans |
9th Jan 2024 |
10 months ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 3 - "Jeans"
Gregg Wallace visits two factories in Italy and Wales to explore the fascinating secrets behind how Welsh jeans brand Hiut make their trousers, learning how denim cloth is made and then transformed into one of the world's most popular items of clothing.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits a zip factory to learn how the ubiquitous fastener is made, and she heads to the research and development facility of a denim manufacturer to witness environmentally friendly ways of distressing denim to make a new pair of jeans look old.Historian Ruth Goodman discovers an unknown name in the history of jeans who helped to shape their design forever, and uncovers the fascinating history of indigo dye.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Jelly Beans |
3rd Jan 2024 |
10 months ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 2 - "Jelly Beans"
Gregg Wallace explores the Jelly Bean Factory in Dublin to reveal the incredible processes it employs to make ten million colourful little sweets every day.Cherry Healey visits the University of Birmingham to learn about the important role glucose plays in our bodies, and she visits a lipstick factory to discover how one of the ingredients in jelly beans plays a key role in the production of her lippy.Historian Ruth Goodman is serving up the history of jelly and delves into the story of post-war pick‘n'mix.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Yorkshire Puddings |
27th Dec 2023 |
10 months ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 8, Episode 1 - "Yorkshire Puddings"
Gregg Wallace is following production of a seasonal favourite, the Yorkshire pudding. Inside the factory in Hull, they produce five hundred million frozen Yorkies every year. Although the factory makes them by the tonne, the ingredients are as simple as when you make them at home – flour, eggs, milk and salt. But the processes are entirely industrial, with high tech mixers, a 53 metre-long conveyor oven and huge freezers.Gregg learns that the key to getting the perfect Yorkshire pudding shape is to trap air in the batter while mixing, and to make sure the oil added to the cooking pan forms a ‘halo'. Elsewhere in the episode, Cherry Healey visits one of the country's largest wheat testing and storage depots where each silo contains enough wheat to make flour for 416 million Yorkshire puddings. And if you prefer beef to your Christmas turkey, she teams up with food scientist, Barbara Bray to learn how to cook the perfect gravy for a Sunday roast. And historian Ruth Goodman bites into the history of the roast dinner; and helps a chef master the art of washing up Tudor-style.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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| Season 7 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#16 |
Mints |
9th May 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 16 - "Mints"
Gregg Wallace visits a factory with a menthol scent - the Polos factory in York, which produces 32 million mints every day and contributes to the 19,000 tonnes of mints per year that the UK consumes.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits the largest sugar beet factory in Europe and helps to bring in the harvest on one of the last surviving peppermint farms in the UK. And Ruth Goodman explores the clever marketing that persuaded many people to purchase minty mouthwash.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#15 |
Rice Pudding |
2nd May 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 15 - "Rice Pudding"
Gregg Wallace explores the Ambrosia factory in Lifton, Devon, to reveal how it makes up to 360,000 rice puddings every single day.Cherry Healey is in the Po Valley in Italy to find out how fresh water from the Alps is used to grow more than a million tonnes of rice every year. And Ruth Goodman is serving up the history of school dinners.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#14 |
Vegan Sausages |
25th Apr 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 14 - "Vegan Sausages"
Gregg Wallace visits a Yorkshire team that churn out up to 90,000 vegan sausages a day! Heck have been making these bangers since 2018, and the process is surprisingly futuristic.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers how Canadian soy beans are transformed into protein-packed tofu, and she heads to the Scottish coast to harvest a vegan superfood of the sea.Historian Ruth Goodman uncovers the green shoots of the vegetarian movement in Britain and the high price that British sailors paid when deprived of their five a day.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#13 |
Crumpets |
18th Apr 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 13 - "Crumpets"
Gregg Wallace visits the factory making 432 million crumpets every year. Crumpets are a British classic made from a precise combination of ingredients, using some clever chemistry to create their famous ‘holey' texture.Cherry Healey is learning the science of how to make the perfect batter for pancakes and visits a factory in Manchester that makes another British favourite, Eccles cakes, which are shipped all over the world.Ruth Goodman reveals the long journey of how crumpets got their rise and eventually their bubbles, and traces the history of Britain's obsession with toasting baked goods.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#12 |
Pork Pies |
11th Apr 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 12 - "Pork Pies"
Gregg Wallace explores the Vale of Mowbray pork pie factory in Northallerton, Yorkshire, which began making pork pies in 1928. He visited the factory in May 2022, following production of their 75g snack-sized traditional pork pie – of which they make 425,000 every week.Cherry Healey reveals hacks for the perfect vegan shortcrust pastry, makes piccalilli as a pork pie accompaniment, and learns how to drive one of the HGVs that transport food products every day.In Cornwall, Ruth Goodman fishes for the history of one of Britain's most unusual pies, the star gazey pie, and she explores the story of powdered egg during the Second World War.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#11 |
Jaffa Cakes |
4th Apr 2023 |
1 year ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 11 - "Jaffa Cakes"
Gregg Wallace visits a Manchester factory that churns out 6 million Jaffa Cakes every single day - 1.4 billion per year. Cherry Healey is in Jaffa, the city responsible for growing the fruit that gives these cakes their name. Ruth Goodman investigates why an urgent legal decision was required as to whether they are cakes or biscuits.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#10 |
Buses |
8th Aug 2022 |
2 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 10 - "Buses"
The red double-decker bus is a global icon. They carry millions of passengers every day across the capital and are as synonymous with London as Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. Now, Gregg Wallace has special access to a factory in Scarborough, Yorkshire where they build this famous people mover. But the bus that Gregg is helping to produce is a little bit special, because it's fully electric.Gregg helps the factory across all stages of the bus's construction, including operating a crane to lower the bus's steps in place, adding the anti-slip lino, riveting and gluing the walls and wiring the electrics - before taking on the nerve-wracking task of driving the finished bus out of the factory.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits a bus windscreen factory where she gets to grips with the construction of tough laminated heated windscreens. And in the main bus factory, she helps to give the bus its bright red coat of paint. She also visits an offshore windfarm to learn how turbines convert wind into watts that could one day power the electric buses.Historian Ruth Goodman learns about London's earliest double deckers and the vital role they played in the First World War.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#9 |
Trains |
1st Aug 2022 |
2 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 9 - "Trains"
When he was a child, Gregg loved playing with toy trainsets. Now he's got special access to learn how the ultimate model is made: a huge 187 tonne, five carriage electric train. At the 84-acre Alstom factory site in Derby, each one takes up to one thousand hours to complete.Gregg follows every step of the process, from the delivery of vast lengths of aluminium and a 15,000 degree welding operation to the carriages' assembly with a set of enormous cranes. He learns about such parts of the train's design as the dead man's pedal and the importance of electrification - all before getting to drive the newly finished train himself.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey travels to Scotland to visit the UK's last remaining factory that produces aluminium via smelting. She also visits an HS2 construction site to learn how two huge tunnel boring machines are digging ten miles through the hills.Historian Ruth Goodman is energised by the history of electric trains as she learns that the UK's first was a tourist train that is still in use along the Brighton seafront. The technology pioneered in the seaside town went on to be used in underground transportation all over the world.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#8 |
Vacuums |
16th Feb 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 8 - "Vacuums"
Gregg Wallace visits a huge vacuum cleaner factory in the heart of Somerset. This 32-acre site is a hive of activity where 1.2 million vacuums are made every year. Gregg is following their biggest seller, the Henry vacuum cleaner in bright red.He starts with head of operations Stuart Cochrane, who is taking delivery of 25 tonnes of clear polypropylene pellets. They are transported to the factory floor via a spaghetti junction of pipes and then mixed with a red colouring agent. A massive moulding machine heats the plastic pellets and forces them into a drum-shaped mould under 300 tonnes of clamp pressure, the equivalent weight of 24 London buses. There are 47 of these huge moulding machines in the factory, churning out a total of 5,000 vacuums every day.Next, Gregg's vacuum needs a bit of personality. The famous smile was drawn on for the first time as a joke by an employee at a trade show, but it attracted so much attention that it quickly became a permanent fixture. It is created using a process called PAD printing. Silicone pads are dipped in ink and pressed onto the surface of the moulded plastic ‘face' to create the eyes and smile, after which it is cured under heat to dry the ink.With the drum and face moulded and printed, and wheels made from moulded recycled plastic, the bottom half of the vacuum is assembled in less than a minute. Timing is crucial - the drum is still hot from the moulding machine, so the wheels must be slotted in before the plastic cools and shrinks.Now for the top half of the vacuum cleaner, which starts with a moulded motor housing. The motor needs power, so Gregg meets with wiring section manager Nathan Bandy at the loom assembly station. Nathan explains that the wiring loom is a cluster of cables that connect to the on/off switch, transmitting electricity to the motor.With so many electrical and mechanical parts in each vacuum, the factory has its own on-site testing centre. Gregg can't quite believe his eyes, as everywhere he looks, they are being put through their paces. It is like a torture chamber for vacuum cleaners!Back at the factory, the top half of Gregg's vacuum is coming together, and the shiny top cover is emerging from another moulding machine.Next, Gregg is sent off in search of a set of ‘wands' for his vacuum, and project manager Roy Poole has the magic touch. The wands start life as 422mm stainless steel tubes which are fed into a machine that reduces one end by 1mm and stretches the other by 1.75, so they will slot neatly together to form a solid link between the brushes and the hose.At last, the components can be brought together at the final assembly station, and it happens fast! The lower housing forms the base, then the motor with a jacket of acoustic wrap. The upper motor housing drops in on top with the reeler and ten-metre-long cable coming in above, before it is all finished off with the shiny cover. The machine is plugged in and powered up to check the suction reaches a precise 225 millibar. Gregg is stunned to see that all the components come together in less than 30 seconds, before they're checked, boxed up and sent to the dispatch area.The storage and distribution centre is 21,000 square feet, the size of nine tennis courts, and from there, the boxes of vacuums roll down a clever chute to one of the ten trucks that leave the factory every day, each carrying nearly 1,000 machines.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#7 |
Ice Cream |
9th Feb 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 7 - "Ice Cream"
Gregg Wallace visits a family-run factory in the heart of rural Aberdeenshire, which churns out more than 49 tonnes of dairy ice cream every day. Gregg is delighted to learn he's following the entire production of their one-litre tub of honeycomb flavour.Cherry Healey heads to an ice rink in Hull with headache expert Dr Fayyaz Ahmed and enlists an ice hockey team to test the best methods of stopping brain freeze. She also goes in search of a non-drip ice lolly and follows the tip-top process of how sprinkles are made.Meanwhile, historian Ruth Goodman hops on board an ice cream van to find out how soft whip became a favourite on Britain's streets.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#6 |
Mugs |
2nd Feb 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 6 - "Mugs"
Gregg Wallace visits the Denby factory in Derbyshire, which has been making pottery since 1809. We Brits drink a staggering 195 million mugs of tea and coffee every day, so Gregg is following production of one of the factory's best sellers, the Halo Heritage mug.Every cup and pot in this historic factory starts life as a giant 100 metre-long mound of clay. Operations director Dean Barlow explains there are 100,000 tons of clay in this enormous pile, enough to last the factory about 20 years.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Tortilla Chips |
26th Jan 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 5 - "Tortilla Chips"
Gregg Wallace visits the biggest tortilla factory in Europe. The Coventry site covers more than 21,000 square meters, the size of three football pitches, and makes 60,000 tonnes of snacks every year. Gregg is following production of their UK bestseller, the 150g sharing bag of chilli heatwave flavour tortilla chips.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey visits the UK's largest chilli farm, where her tastebuds take on the hottest chilli in the world. She also discovers the science behind the UK's first compostable crisp packet.And historian Ruth Goodman reveals the starchy story of how the Elizabethans kept their huge ruff collars standing to attention, as well as taking a trip to the flicks to discover how American popcorn became a box office smash.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Leather Boots |
19th Jan 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 4 - "Leather Boots"
Gregg Wallace visits a factory tucked away amongst thatched cottages in the village of Wollaston, Northamptonshire. It may be a tranquil setting, but this factory has been making boots for 120 years, producing footwear for policemen and pop stars alike. Gregg follows every step of production of a pair of original Dr. Martens 1460 leather boots, so called because the factory started making them on the 1st of the 4th 1960.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets to grips with the speedy machines that use 350 metres of yarn to make a single pair of shoelaces. She also learns how to make a pair of children's wellies and test that they're fit for the muddiest puddles.Historian Ruth Goodman reveals the story of a British shoemaker that elevated ladies' shoes from risqué music hall performers of the 19th century to gracing the feet of the Queen of England. And she explores the origins of football boots as well as the England team's boot emergency at the 1950 World Cup.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Chairs |
12th Jan 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 3 - "Chairs"
Gregg Wallace visits the Ercol factory in Buckinghamshire, an area associated with furniture making since the 19th century.We Brits spend a staggering £300 million pounds each week on furniture, and Gregg is following the production of one of this factory's best sellers, the Windsor chair. Starting life as ash trees from European woodlands, they're cut, drilled, steamed, curved and sanded until they're ready for delivery to shops and homes.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey investigates how sitting too much could be very bad for our health, and she helps to manage a sustainable woodland at the Rushmore Estate in Wiltshire. And historian Ruth Goodman discovers how utility furniture made during the Blitz is still influencing the designs we buy today, as well as learning how a humble British carpenter went on to make the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Malt Loaf |
5th Jan 2022 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 2 - "Malt Loaf"
Malt loaf has been a popular teatime treat for more than 80 years; these days we get through a staggering 130 million of them every year. So to get to grips with how this sweet and squidgy cake-cum-bread is made, Gregg Wallace is rolling up his sleeves to get stuck in, following a production line of massive dough mixing, mind-boggling tin filling and intensely hot baking.Meanwhile, historian Ruth Goodman reveals the surprising story of a British baking company that cooked up the first business computer, as well as visiting Cambridgeshire to find out how wheat flour was ground the traditional way, until the Victorians' demand for white bread brought about the demise of Britain's iconic windmills.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Diggers |
29th Dec 2021 |
2 years ago |
21:00 - 22:00 |
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Season 7, Episode 1 - "Diggers"
In the first episode of this supersized series, Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey get special access to a factory that makes as many as a hundred iconic yellow diggers every single day.When he was a boy, like many a mucky child in the sand pit, Gregg used to play with toy diggers. Now he's got special access to explore the extraordinary engineering processes that make the ultimate big kids' toy! The JCB factory in Rocester, Staffordshire is a cathedral to construction, covering 60,000 square meters, where cutting edge technology and a super skilled workforce take just 45 hours to make a digger from scratch. Gregg follows the production of their best-known model, the backhoe loader, so-called because it has a loader shovel on the front and a hoe arm for digging on the back. To construct these eight-and-a-half tonne beauties, the factory gets through 650 tonnes of steel, 170,000 bolts, 5,000 litres of paint and 236 miles of wiring each week!
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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| Season 6 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#3 |
Yoghurt |
12th Jan 2021 |
3 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 6, Episode 3 - "Yoghurt"
We eat them for breakfast, pack them in our lunch boxes and enjoy them for dessert; here in the UK we spend £1.4 billion a year on yoghurt pots. Gregg Wallace visits a factory in rural Somerset that produces one million pots of it every 24 hours. He meets the herd of Friesian cows that provide the milk, sees how the milk is processed and has a bacterial culture added, and watches how the extraordinary packing process takes place.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey helps out with the UK's biggest blackcurrant harvest, trying out plant based alternatives to milk and visiting a factory that makes food-safe yoghurt pots from 100% recycled material.Also, historian Ruth Goodman hops on board the story of the electric milk float and tackles the contentious origins of the cream tea.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Socks |
5th Jan 2021 |
3 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 6, Episode 2 - "Socks"
To keep their feet nice and warm, the British spend almost 723 million pounds a year on socks! In the second episode of this new series, Gregg Wallace visits a sock factory in Leicester that produces one and a half million socks annually. This atmospheric factory is a fascinating mix of Wallace and Gromit-style and high-tech machinery, with a close-knit team of highly skilled operators.Elsewhere in the episode, Cherry Healey finds out what causes smelly feet and pounds the pavements to test out which socks best tackle this stinky situation. She visits a cotton spinning factory in Manchester, whose high-tech machinery produces 4,200 miles of yarn every hour, and meets a revolutionary eco cotton supplier.Historian Ruth Goodman steps back into the 1980s, when socks were at the height of fashion. And she ventures further back to the Great War, when the ‘Kitchener stitch' helped to save the feet of British soldiers in the trenches.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Cider |
27th Dec 2020 |
3 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 6, Episode 1 - "Cider"
Gregg Wallace visits the biggest cider factory in the world, which produces more than 350 million litres each year. The scale of production blows his mind as at each turn he's confronted with huge machinery and incredible processes. He visits Birchley Farm in Herefordshire, at the heart of cider country, before heading to the mill at Ledbury to help sort the apples. At the factory itself, he learns about the fermentation process and the critical role of yeast, before being shown the vast scale of the bottling process, which sees 833 bottles cleaned and filled every minute.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey explores how the factory is creating new orchards of a sweet apple variety called Scrumptious through the ancient technique of grafting, as well as revealing how a by-product from the brewing industry, CO2, is vital in the manufacture of fire extinguishers.Historian Ruth Goodman traces a Victorian apple-breeding boom with Dr Annie Gray, recreating one of Queen Victoria's favourite baked apple desserts. And she learns how it was British scientists and cider makers - not French champagne makers - who were the first to put fizz in a bottle.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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| Season 5 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#9 |
Cereal Bars |
5th May 2020 |
4 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 9 - "Cereal Bars"
Gregg Wallace is in Essex at an enormous cereal bar factory, which produces 400,000 fruit- and nut-packed treats a day. Gregg follows production from the arrival of two tonnes of macadamia nuts all the way through to dispatch. Along the way, he gets hands on with all the ingredients, from nuts to cranberries and sultanas to puffed rice. He learns that it takes a carefully balanced blend of honey and glucose to bind the ingredients together. Too much honey and the bar would be too chewy. Too much glucose and it would set rock solid. A mix of both produces the ideal texture.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is helping out with the macadamia harvest in South Africa. The country is the world's largest producer of these nuts, responsible for a quarter of the global harvest. She learns that the trees they grow on can take seven years before they produce their first crop, partly explaining why these nuts are so costly. She also discovers that their super tough shells require pressure equivalent to being sat on by a baby elephant to break them open. In the UK, Cherry visits the Eden Project in Cornwall and learns that nuts aren't all they seem - only a small percentage of what we commonly refer to as nuts are actually botanical nuts. Peanuts are legumes and cashews are drupes. However, everything we refer to as a nut is the reproductive part of the plant and packed full of nutritional goodness.Historian Ruth Goodman climbs a mountain in the Lake District to meet an explorer who tells her all about one of Britain's original snack bars, Kendal Mint Cake. Its popularity grew after famous explorers Ernest Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary took it on their expeditions to Antarctica and Everest respectively. Ruth also visits the home of Britain's very first cereal bar to learn how it went from simple hippy food to shifting three million bars a week.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#8 |
Liqueurs |
28th Apr 2020 |
4 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 8 - "Liqueurs"
Gregg Wallace is in Ireland at an enormous liqueurs factory that produces 540,000 bottles a day. He follows the production of cream liqueur from the arrival of maize to make Irish whiskey right through to dispatch of the finished liqueur. It is the show's longest ever production timeline, taking more than three years. Along the way, Gregg learns that it is the barrels whiskey is matured in that create around half of its flavour and discovers that a milk protein is the secret to mixing cream and whiskey together.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at the plant where 85 per cent of Ireland's bottles and jars are recycled. They process 500 tonnes every day. Cherry also investigates the science behind aperitifs. There is nothing special in these beverages that stimulates appetite - it is something common to all alcoholic drinks. Cherry puts it to the test with a team of rugby players and discovers they eat 8 per cent more – or an additional 320 calories – when alcohol is involved. Cherry is also getting a lesson in the rules of whiskey, learning that single malt must be made from 100 per cent malted barley from a single distillery, whereas bourbon must be 51 per cent maize, and blends can be the product of a mix of grains from different distilleries. The one thing they have in common is that they must be matured in wooden barrels for a minimum of three years in order to be called whiskey.Historian Ruth Goodman is getting spiritual with the history of liqueurs. She learns that their origins are to be found a world away from funky downtown bars. She visits a former monastery and discovers that the drinks were invented by monks looking for the elixir of life. Ruth also visits a distillery in Ireland, where she learns that 100 years ago Irish whiskey held an astonishing 60 per cent of the global whisky market. Today, it is just 5 per cent. This drop was largely due to resistance to adopting the modern column still method of distillation.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#7 |
Soup |
21st Apr 2020 |
4 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 7 - "Soup"
In Wigan, Gregg Wallace visits an enormous soup factory, which produces two million tins a day. He follows the production of vegetable soup, from a pea harvest in Yorkshire right through to the finished soup going into cans and being dispatched. Along the way, Gregg watches as a five-tonne avalanche of peas – around a million individual peas – is frozen within two hours of being picked. He mixes up three tonnes of veg and 500 gallons of tomato sauce and watches as they are combined and packed into 10,000 tins. Gregg is astonished by a 27.4m-tall pressure-cooking tower and surprised to learn that for every one degree drop in temperature in winter, the factory observes a 3.5% increase in soup sales.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is measuring the vitamin content of fresh and frozen vegetables. She finds that her sample of frozen peas have six times the vitamin C content of fresh, while sprouts do even better with 800% more. Cherry travels to a rock salt mine outside Crewe, which supplies half of all salt used in the UK food industry, and runs an experiment to see if soup could be the answer to staying fuller for longer.Historian Ruth Goodman is cooking up a batch of ‘soop of buttered spinach' from the 17th-century cookbook of Robert May. This is the first reference to a recipe for soup in English, but the resulting sweet, vegetable puree doesn't resemble soup as we know it today. She also heads to Poplar in east London to a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Here, Ruth discovers that the notion of the soup kitchen originally began in 1795 as a response to a countrywide harvest failure.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#6 |
Pots and Pans |
14th Apr 2020 |
4 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 6 - "Pots and Pans"
Gregg Wallace is in France at an enormous foundry that produces a cast iron pot every five seconds. He follows production of casserole dishes from the arrival of 20 tonnes of crude iron right through to brightly coloured orange pots. Along the way, Gregg tests his mettle by taking a sample of molten iron at 1,550 degrees Celsius. With only a heatproof visor and gloves as protection, he dips a ladle into a bubbling cauldron and pours the white-hot sample into a tiny mould. He also discovers that the coloured enamel they protect their pots with is made from glass.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is in South Africa visiting one of the largest iron ore mines in the world. Nine miles long by three miles wide, it produces a staggering 670,000 tonnes every day. Cherry rides in one of the biggest dumper trucks in the world. Seven metres tall and packing 2,500 horsepower, it collects 65 tonnes of freshly mined rock and dumps it in to a processing plant. Days later, the iron ore is taken away from the mine in a two-mile-long train. And Cherry is rooting out the science behind cooking the perfect casserole. It turns out that when it comes to cooking time, longer isn't always better.Historian Ruth Goodman takes a journey through time, learning how one-pot cooking evolved. From communal ovens during the industrial revolution through to 1970s slow cookers, technology influenced how people prepared simple meals. Ruth also visits the birthplace of the industrial revolution in Shropshire to discover how casting iron in sand moulds democratised our kitchens by producing affordable cookware.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Pasties |
7th Apr 2020 |
4 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 5 - "Pasties"
Gregg Wallace is in Cornwall at an enormous bakery where they produce 180,000 Cornish pasties a day. He follows the production of the pastry snacks from the arrival of two tonnes of swedes right through to dispatch. Gregg learns that there are very specific rules to creating a Cornish pasty. They must be made in Cornwall, the filling can only contain onion, potato, swede, beef and some seasoning - and each ingredient must be cooked from raw within the pastry parcel.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is delving into the wonderful world of the onion. She peels back the layers to discover the science that makes it such a versatile vegetable, and more importantly, why it makes us cry. It is all down to a chemical called lachrymatory factor, which is only created when an onion is cut into. Cherry visits an anaerobic digestion plant, where they turn waste from food factories into electricity. Micro-organisms feed on food waste, producing methane gas, which is used to power generators.Historian Ruth Goodman is debunking some common Cornish pasty myths. It has been claimed that the county's tin miners invented the pasty as a convenient snack to eat while they toiled at the rock face. She learns that miners may have eaten them, but they didn't invent them. And it is unlikely that they used the pastry crimp as a handle. She also visits the Worshipful Company of Grocers in London, which was responsible for importing pepper into Britain. She learns how this ubiquitous seasoning transformed from a commodity so valuable it was known as black gold to a spice that everyone could afford.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Mattresses |
20th Aug 2019 |
5 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 4 - "Mattresses"
Gregg Wallace is in Leeds, at an enormous mattress factory where they produce 600 bouncy beds every day. He follows the production of pocket-sprung mattresses from the arrival of hard steel right through to soft bedding heading out of dispatch. Along the way he learns how lengths of metal are stretched into thin wire and coiled into springs which are placed into individual pockets. And how the mattresses are designed to wick sweat away from our bodies with the help of natural fibres like hemp and wool.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning whether there are benefits to be had from taking an afternoon nap. She meets up with a sleep scientist who tells her that we should be making time for a snooze rather than reaching for a cup of coffee. To prove his point, he runs an experiment which demonstrates that reaction times can be improved by a short sleep. 20 minutes is the optimum nap time - any longer risks falling in to a deep sleep which is difficult to wake from. And she is visiting a sheep farm where she sees how wool is shorn and discovers its amazing anti-bacterial and fire-retardant properties, which make it perfect for lining a mattress.Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the origins of the modern mattress. She lies down on a straw stuffed sack which the lower classes would have slept on in the middle ages and learns how steel transformed our bedtime habits, first with the 'innerspring' and then with the more comfortable 'pocket spring' technology. And she learns how a famous Scandinavian inspired home store is responsible for our enduring love affair with the duvet.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Croissants |
13th Aug 2019 |
5 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 3 - "Croissants"
Gregg Wallace is in France at an enormous croissant factory where they produce 336,000 of the flaky pastries every day. He follows the production of croissants from the arrival of 21 tonnes of butter right through to dispatch. Along the way he learns how they use an 83-year-old strain of yeast to pack a flavourful punch and discovers the secret of pastry lamination. They layer very thin slices of butter between sheets of dough to create the famous flaky pastry.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is testing the best way to eat a croissant. With the help of a professor who specialises in the science of our senses, she discovers that there is an optimum way to consume them. Ideally, they will be served warm so that the butter inside oozes fat into the pastry, smothered in jam to give a sugar and fat hit, and eaten from a paper bag so that the crinkly sound accentuates the flaky texture of the pastry. She also heads to north Wales, visiting a farm and dairy where they produce a special type of ‘concentrated' butter. The butter is a whopping 99.8% fat, perfect for producing croissants with a long shelf life.Historian Ruth Goodman is in Paris investigating the croissant's surprising Austrian origins. It is thought that it originated with a pastry called a kipferl, which Austrian bakers invented in the 17th century to commemorate a heroic victory over the armies of the Ottoman Empire. Its shape was a mocking reference to the crescent on their enemy's flag. But it took a while to transform into the modern pastry - the earliest written recipe she manages to find for a modern French croissant comes as late as 1906. Ruth also discovers that bread played a vital role in the French Revolution.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Wax Jackets |
6th Aug 2019 |
5 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 2 - "Wax Jackets"
Gregg Wallace is in South Shields at a clothing factory where they produce 650 waxed jackets a day. He follows the production of water-resistant jackets from the arrival of 500-metre-long rolls of undyed cotton through to dispatch. Along the way, he sees the fabric dipped into baths of wax heated to 95 degrees Celsius and learns how a 23-piece pattern is used to create a complex 3D jacket jigsaw.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning about the science of staying dry. She finds that it is easy enough to waterproof a fabric by coating it in a non-permeable coating. But while this stops water getting in, it also stops sweat getting out. The key to comfortable rain resistance is a breathable membrane which contains microscopic holes, big enough to allow steam to escape, but too small to let rain drops in. Cherry also visits an umbrella factory, where manufacturing methods have barely changed in 150 years. She helps transform a simple wooden stick into a top-notch canopy using saws, pliers and needle and thread.Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the fishy origin of waxed jackets. She visits a remote Scottish harbour and learns how these weatherproof coats were born out of oil covered sail cloth which seamen adapted into garments to keep out the worst of the weather. She also visits Edinburgh and learns how an English King played a key role in the popularity of that favourite Scottish fabric, tartan.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Cherry Bakewells |
30th Jul 2019 |
5 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 5, Episode 1 - "Cherry Bakewells"
Gregg Wallace is in Stoke-on-Trent at an enormous cherry bakewell factory where they produce 250,000 little tarts every day. He follows the production of cherry bakewells, from the arrival of 27 tonnes of flour right through to dispatch. Along the way, he learns what makes a shortcrust pastry ‘short' and discovers the simple way they ensure every cherry is precisely placed. They employ a team of 12 who carefully pop each one on top by hand.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning how to swerve a soggy pastry bottom when baking pies and tarts at home. She discovers that it is all about a pre-heated oven, a proper pie dish, rolling the pastry to the correct thickness and blind baking. And she is at an almond butter factory, learning how almonds are roasted and milled to become a thick spread ready for toast.Historian Ruth Goodman is sniffing out the origins of one of the cherry bakewell's key ingredients, frangipane. She learns that, surprisingly, the familiar fragrant almond filling was born out of a perfume used to disguise the foul smells of 17th-century Paris. She also visits the Peak District town of Bakewell and learns how the modern cherry bakewell is a descendent of a simple recipe mistake in the kitchen.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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| Season 4 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#7 |
Cheese |
26th Mar 2019 |
5 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 7 - "Cheese"
Gregg Wallace is in Gateshead at a cheese factory where they produce 3,000 tonnes of spreadable cheese every year. He follows the production of jalapeno chilli flavour cheese from a 28,000 litre delivery of milk to 5,400 squeezy tubes. The process begins in a traditional way – by making cheddar. He learns about the microbiology responsible for splitting milk into curds and whey and forming this hard cheese. He then chops 344 kilos of cheddar and gouda to make the base for his squeezy cheese, and puts it in a huge blender with whey, water and other ingredients in order to stabilise it and keep it soft and spreadable.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is finding out how bacteria are responsible for the huge variety in smell, taste and appearance of different types of cheese. She learns that some smelly cheeses contain the same bacteria that are responsible for stinky feet. In cheese the odour is a by-product, a sign that the bacteria are silently changing the internal texture and taste of the product. She also learns the scientific rules for making perfect cheese on toast. It is all about medium sliced white bread, with precisely 50g of grated medium cheddar, set an exact 18 centimetres from the grill.Historian Ruth Goodman is finding out how cheddar, originally just one of hundreds of regional varieties in the UK, became the predominant hard cheese world wide. She discovers that it is down to a Victorian cheesemaker called Joseph Harding who first standardised production methods. She also makes a batch of processed cheese, using Kraft's original 100-year-old patent recipe.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#6 |
Pencils |
19th Mar 2019 |
5 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 6 - "Pencils"
Gregg Wallace is in Germany, at a historic factory which produces 600,000 pencils a day. At materials intake he is astonished that the main material in a pencil is not lead, but graphite. He helps mix this with clay to produce a 250-kilo batch – enough for 200,000 pencils. He also discovers why these pencils are hexagonal - because it stops them rolling off the table. And he performs an unusual quality check by throwing his finished pencils from a 25-metre-high tower. When they are chopped open the leads are still intact.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at Manchester University examining the astonishing properties of graphite. She discovers that this highly conductive form of carbon is also able to withstand temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Celsius. More surprising still, if you strip a single layer of atoms from its surface, you produce an entirely new material known as graphene. Thin and virtually invisible, embedding this in our phone screens could mean that in future we could simply roll them up. She is also investigating the science behind graphology and asking if we can evaluate personality from handwriting style.Historian Ruth Goodman is on the trail of the very earliest pencils in the Lake District. It is a story which begins in the 15th century with the discovery of a huge deposit of pure graphite in the Borrowdale valley. Carved into sticks and wrapped in string, it made a brilliant writing tool. Ruth is also wondering if, in this modern digital age, the pencil is outdated technology. But she finds documents that show the death of handwriting has been prematurely announced on many occasions, dating right back to the invention of the printing press.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Beer |
12th Mar 2019 |
5 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 5 - "Beer"
Gregg Wallace is in Burton upon Trent at Britain's biggest brewery, where they produce 3 million pints of beer a day. He follows the production of Britain's best-selling lager from raw barley to finished cans. Along the way he gets to grips with brewing terms like mash, wort, grist and coppers, and learns how 0.2 millilitres of yeast is enough to make 1.3 million pints alcoholic. In this high-volume factory he marvels at a machine that can fill 165 cans in just 5.5 seconds.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is learning how four basic ingredients – water, malted barley, hops and yeast – can be manipulated to make dark, heavy ales, light, fragrant lagers and everything in between. She is also uncovering the secrets of the perfect pint in a scientific study which shows that drinking beer from a curved glass makes it taste fruitier, while a frothy head and a higher temperature also improve flavour. Which is a win for the traditional British warm pint.Historian Ruth Goodman is asking why Burton became the centre of brewing in Britain in the 19th century. The answer is that it is all in the water. The hard water there was perfect for brewing flavourful stouts and porters. While its position on the canal network made it ideally placed to transport finished beer round Britain and beyond. She is also finding out how beer got its stereotypically blokey reputation, despite the fact that brewing was traditionally a female profession. It is all down to the introduction of hops in the 15th century, which turned beer making from a cottage industry into an industrialised process.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Pizza |
5th Mar 2019 |
5 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 4 - "Pizza"
Gregg Wallace is in Italy, at an enormous pizza factory where they produce 400,000 frozen pizzas each day. He mixes up a 450 kilo batch of dough for the bases; enough for 180 000 pizzas. He watches as each one is stretched to exactly 26 centimetres in diameter, then pricked with 522 holes, each 4mm deep, before they're topped with tomato and disappear into the wood fired oven. It's 25 metres long and the floor is made of rotating panels of volcanic rock heated to 450 degrees Celsius. Gregg's pizzas emerge fully cooked after just 80 seconds. They're topped with cheese, pepperoni, chillies and onions, then frozen and dispatched on their 1000 mile journey to the freezer compartments of British supermarkets.Meanwhile Cherry Healey is asking if mozzarella – the traditional choice for pizzas - is also the scientific best bet. She finds that not all cheeses are equal, and that to melt well they must sit in a pH zone between 5 and 5.9. This explains why blue cheese and feta don't work on pizza but mozzarella and gruyere do. In Austria, she transforms 400 kilos of pork into pepperoni. She learns that this preserved sausage is fermented and salted to give it a long shelf life. A production process that takes more than 2 weeks.Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the technology that allows frozen foods like pizza to be transported across the globe. 150 years ago we were all 'locavores', eating locally sourced food. But in the 1880s the game-changing invention of freezer ships meant that lamb and beef could be shipped from New Zealand and Australia. Combined with the 1938 arrival of the freezer truck, this created the worldwide cold chain that we rely on today. She also meets the man who popularised pizza in the UK back in 1965 when he opened his first restaurant in London's Soho.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Potato Waffles |
26th Feb 2019 |
5 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 3 - "Potato Waffles"
Gregg Wallace is in Lowestoft, at an enormous factory where they produce 450 tonnes of frozen food each day. He follows the production of frozen potato waffles, from the arrival of 25 tonnes of potatoes right through to dispatch. Along the way he discovers how they make a monster amount of mash and marvels at the technology which stamps out a million identical waffles every 24 hours, each weighing 68 grams and exactly 15 mm thick.Meanwhile Cherry Healey is learning about the differences between waxy and floury potatoes and finding out which spud you should use for which job. Small waxy potatoes are best in salads and boiled, while floury potatoes produce the best mash and roasties. She's also asking whether, in these carb-conscious days, we're unfairly demonising the potato. At King's College London she meets a dietician who runs tests which show that the potato, gram for gram, has more vitamin C than beetroot and carrot and more potassium than banana. Keeping hold of these nutrients isn't easy. But Cherry is delighted to discover that skin-on wedges, as long as you go easy on the oil, are a nutritional winner.Historian Ruth Goodman is myth busting Walter Raleigh's connection to potatoes. She discovers that he couldn't have brought them back from North America, because there weren't potatoes there until 20 years after he died. Instead the credit must go to Spanish explorers and an enterprising French chemist called Parmentier, who popularised this exotic new vegetable. She also meets one of the inventors of the potato waffle, who shows her how Mr Whippy ice creams were the inspiration behind this teatime treat.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Sausages |
31st Jul 2018 |
6 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 2 - "Sausages"
Gregg Wallace explores a North Yorkshire factory that produces 625,000 sausages a day. He dons stainless steel armour to join 28 Durham butchers who prepare 2,500 pork shoulders each day and follows 20 tonnes of pork as it arrives at the sausage factory. It's a short recipe - these 97% pork premium bangers require only pork shoulder meat and seasoning. He mixes up a 150 kg batch of minced meat, loads 280 metres of skin and feeds it all into a machine which can fill 600 sausages in a minute. He also tries his hand on an old fashioned piston filler, making sausages by hand. Even the most experienced hand can only produce 1,500 sausages in an hour, while the machine filler can work 2,400% faster.Cherry Healey is at the University of Chester getting the scientific lowdown on getting the best from your banger. It turns out that low and slow shallow frying delivers the best combination of flavour, moistness and succulence. But at a time when one in four people are reducing the amount of meat they eat, she heads to Middlesbrough to find out how veggie protein is created from a tiny speck of natural fungus. She also travels to Lincolnshire to find out how a 'meat sock' is the secret to wrapping a Scotch Egg every three seconds.Historian Ruth Goodman finds out how German bratwurst became a top dog in America, learning how German immigrant Charles Feltman originated the hot dog. She heads to St Albans to cook up a 2,000-year-old recipe for sausages. And finally she discovers what the Romans did for Britain by importing pepper, bay leaves and other spices that spike the modern sausages.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Toilet Roll |
24th Jul 2018 |
6 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 4, Episode 1 - "Toilet Roll"
Gregg Wallace explores the Manchester factory that produces 700,000 toilet rolls a day. He begins 940 miles away in Sweden, where the raw material - wood - is harvested from a sustainable forest of one billion spruce trees. Most of the wood is used for timber, but the offcuts are turned into sheets of wood pulp. Gregg follows this pulp to Manchester, where he learns that two types of wood fibre - long and short - are required for a loo roll, to give it strength but also softness. He watches as 3,750 kilos of fibre are combined with 34,000 litres of water and sprayed into a 40-metre-long, 11-metre-high paper-making machine. It takes just four seconds for the watery pulp mix to be transformed into soft, dry paper. It is then rolled onto a 1.2 tonne supersized toilet roll known as a 'mother reel'. Each one of these gives birth to 25,000 individual toilet rolls.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is at Britain's oldest toilet factory, where they churn out 1,000 loos a day. And she gets the bum deal of following the flush through the sewers and water treatment works of Brighton, finding out how sewage is cleared of debris, grease and bacteria, and transformed into clean water in a little over an hour after flushing. She has a cheeky encounter with a high-tech Japanese toilet and heads to Cranfield University to see a prototype toilet that does away with the need for water altogether. Could this be the toilet of the future that gives one-third of the world's population access to efficient sanitation?Historian Ruth Goodman finds out what was used to wipe with before the invention of toilet paper. She discovers that the weapon of choice in the American midwest was a dried-out corn cob. And that it wasn't until the 1930s that toilet paper was guaranteed 'splinter free'. She is also in myth-busting mode, finally laying to rest the idea that Thomas Crapper invented the modern toilet. She heads into the House of Lords to check out an 18th-century flushing toilet, still in use today, and discovers that the Great Stink of 1858 expedited a period of sanitary invention that led to the toilet we know today.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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| Season 3 |
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| + Inside the Factory |
#6 |
Soft Drinks |
16th Jan 2018 |
6 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 6 - "Soft Drinks"
Gregg Wallace explores Ribena's Gloucestershire factory. It turns 90 per cent of Britain's blackcurrants into soft drinks, producing three million bottles a week. Gregg takes delivery of 500 tonnes of blackcurrants at a cider mill in Somerset. The harvest comes in during July and August, when there are no apples to process for cider, so they press blackcurrants instead. Gregg discovers how the aroma of the blackcurrants is captured separately and later added back into the drink. Next, the concentrate and aromas are transported to the drinks factory, where they are mixed with 11 other ingredients before being bottled. Gregg watches a machine that can create a plastic bottle in 0.1 of a second and learns why nitrogen is the secret to creating a bottle that won't get stuck in vending machines.Cherry Healey is harvesting the berries on a farm in Kent - one of 40 that supply the factory. She also heads to the Netherlands to a plant that recycles plastics. It processes two and a half million used PET bottles a day, transforming them into 4mm pellets that can be turned back into drinks bottles. And Cherry is in the lab figuring out why fizzy drinks are so appealing. She learns that bubbles play sensory tricks on us, making fizzy drinks taste colder, less sweet and more flavourful than their still equivalents.Ruth Goodman is investigating the origins of fizzy drinks. Carbonated water was first sold by Mr Schweppe in 1783, but it was a British husband-and-wife team - Robert and Mary White - who were to popularise fizzy pop. In 1890, R White's styled itself as the world's biggest drinks company and they sold 46 million bottles a year. Ruth looks at why we associate barley water with the great British summertime.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Sauces |
9th Jan 2018 |
6 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 5 - "Sauces"
Gregg Wallace is in the Netherlands at one of the world's biggest sauce factories. Its annual output is a quarter of a million tonnes of condiments, and more than 50 per cent of this heads to the UK. Our passion for sauces sees us consume 40 million kilos of mayonnaise every year. Gregg follows its production from a farm near Arnhem, where 23,000 free range hens produce the eggs, to the factory, where he is wowed by an egg cracking machine that can separate the yolks and whites from 1,700 eggs a minute. In the mayonnaise factory 'kitchen' he discovers how the delicate process of combining oil and water - known as emulsification - is performed perfectly every time on huge 480 kilo batches.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is making the glass jars Gregg needs for his mayonnaise. She is at a vast factory in Maastricht, where a furnace holding 250 tonnes of molten glass has been running continuously for the last 11 years. Cherry is also on the trail of another of our favourite sauces - soy - not in Japan, but south Wales, where a factory churns out bottles and sachets of organic sauce to a 2,000-year-old recipe. And the secret of its taste? A special mould called Koji.Historian Ruth Goodman discovers how Brits fell in love with mayonnaise. She traces it back to the introduction of the bottled sauce in the 1960s and samples a series of unusual mayonnaise dishes, including the 'frosted party loaf' - a glorified club sandwich covered in mayo and cream cheese. Ruth is also on the trail of Worcestershire sauce and investigates the traditional story of its origin, as told by Mr Lea and Mr Perrins.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Fish Fingers |
2nd Jan 2018 |
6 years ago |
20:00 - 21:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 4 - "Fish Fingers"
Gregg Wallace explores the Grimsby factory that processes 165 tonnes of fish a week and produces 80,000 cod fish fingers every day. Cod arrives at the factory as compressed blocks of frozen fish. The blocks weigh exactly 7.484 kilos, which is a standardised measure in every fish factory right across the world. Gregg watches as each block is cut into 168 naked fish fingers which are then floured, battered and breaded, ready for a quick 45-second trip through the fryer. He also helps take delivery of 25 tonnes of liquid nitrogen, used to flash freeze the fingers at minus 15 degrees C. But Gregg is amazed to discover that the fish inside the finger remains frozen through every stage of production, right up to the moment you cook it at home.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey travels to Grindavik in Iceland where they land up to 50 tonnes of cod a day. She follows the fish through the processing factory, even trying her hand at gutting the fish. Back in Grimsby, she assists with an ancient method of preserving fish - cold smoking. She learns that the yellow colour of smoked haddock is not down to the smoke but instead is produced by the addition of a natural colouring made from turmeric. Also, just like nine out of ten Brits, Cherry isn't very confident about how to safely defrost food, so she heads to the lab to get the lowdown on bacteria and freezing.Historian Ruth Goodman is investigating the origins of cod fish fingers. She finds that Bird's Eye were the first to introduce them to the UK, basing them on a US product called fish sticks. They were introduced in 1955 and were an instant hit. 542 tonnes were sold in the first year of sale. That went up by 600% the following year. But the British public had a narrow escape - the original idea was that fish fingers would have been made with the oilier and bonier fish, herring. Ruth's also looking at Britain's original fish-based convenience food: the oyster. In the 19th century, Londoners could buy four for a penny, but an outbreak of food poisoning after a banquet in November 1902 caused a national scandal and their popularity plummeted.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Biscuits |
1st Aug 2017 |
7 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 3 - "Biscuits"
Gregg Wallace is in London at Europe's largest biscuit factory, where they produce 80 million biscuits every day. He follows the production of chocolate digestives, from the arrival of 28 tonnes of flour right through to dispatch. Along the way, he discovers that the biscuits are shaped by a bronze roller costing up to ten thousand pounds, and that the chocolate is added to the bottom not the top of the biscuits, meaning we are all eating them the wrong way up.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is on the trail of that chocolate. At the refinery in Manchester, she learns that it is transported in heated lorries kept at 50C to stop it solidifying on its way to the factory. She also discovers that this is the most expensive ingredient, at around £2,000 per tonne. And she is in Nottingham University's sensory lab, where she finds scientific proof that dunking your biscuit improves its flavour and that tea is the best liquid to dunk in. Cherry takes to the streets to see if that stacks up in the real world.Historian Ruth Goodman investigates the link between biscuits and digestion. She finds references in Samuel Pepys's diary to biscuits being a cure for flatulence and digestive discomfort and discovers that in Victorian times it was thought that biscuits could cure everything from typhoid to scarlet fever. She also takes a look at an antique biscuit baked at the beginning of the 20th century - one of Huntley and Palmer's notorious army biscuits. These dry hard biscuits were supplied as rations to five million British soldiers on the front line in the First World War.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Pasta |
25th Jul 2017 |
7 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 2 - "Pasta"
Gregg Wallace is in Italy, hitching a lift on a train carrying over a thousand tonnes of wheat to the largest dried pasta factory in the world. It produces 60% of all pasta made in Italy and supplies 3,000 tonnes to the UK each year. Gregg traces the journey the wheat takes through a seven-storey mill and into the production zone where it is mixed with water, pushed through moulds and turned into spaghetti. Along the way, he discovers that the perfect string of spaghetti is 25 centimetres long and examines the technology that allows them to produce 150,000 kilometres of it each day - enough to stretch round the earth almost four times.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers why the best pasta is made with durum wheat. This is a hard wheat that, when it is milled, turns into the granular yellow flour known as semolina, which translates as semi-milled. This is the essential basis of pasta as it retains its shape and texture when cooked. She also helps to harvest 15 tonnes of tomatoes, turning them into 3,000 litres of pasta sauce. Along the way, Cherry is surprised to hear that the British habit of pairing spaghetti with bolognese outrages many Italians. She learns why different shapes of pasta are ideally paired with different sauces and promises in future she will serve her spaghetti with a more suitable topping, like carbonara.Historian Ruth Goodman discovers that pasta arrived in Britain much earlier than we imagined. She heads to the British Library to look at a manuscript from 1390. It is a cookbook written for King Richard II which contains a recipe for something called lozyns. Ruth cooks up a batch and is convinced that this an early version of lasagne. She also navigates the streets of Soho armed with a 1958 restaurant guide to find out how we first fell in love with Italian food.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Tea Bags |
18th Jul 2017 |
7 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 3, Episode 1 - "Tea Bags"
Gregg Wallace receives a load of tea leaves from Kenya and follows their journey through the factory that produces one quarter of all the tea we drink in Britain. Gregg turns his 20-tonne batch into 6.9 million bags. Along the way, he discovers that there can be up to 20 different teas in your bag and that the recipe for the blend is altered every day, measured against a standard created in 1978.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers the secrets of the tea leaf in an African tea-processing plant. She learns that 40% of each leaf is made up of chemicals called polyphenols. She is surprised to find that white, green and black tea are all made from the same leaves. She also discovers that the bag surrounding your tea is not ordinary paper, but a highly engineered fabric made up of hemp, wood and polypropylene. She watches as a 60-kilometre-long roll is produced. And she gets some scientific tips on making the best possible cup of tea with a tea bag.Historian Ruth Goodman investigates tea adulteration. In the 19th century, there were eight separate factories in London which existed solely to dry and recolour used tea leaves. She discovers that it was 'honest' John Hornim who put that right and ensured we could trust our tea. She also finds that in the military during the Second World War, armoured divisions had to leave the safety of their tanks to brew up - a habit that resulted in many casualties. She climbs on board a modern-day tank to make a cup of tea with a boiling vessel, the innovation that solved this problem.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#6 |
Shoes |
30th Aug 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 6 - "Shoes"
Gregg Wallace joins a human production line in the largest sports shoe factory in the UK to see how they produce 3,500 pairs of trainers every 24 hours by sewing 32 million individual stitches and using 140 miles of thread. He makes his own pair of shoes and discovers how they put together 27 different pieces made from eight different materials which require auto- and manual stitching, and finishing with a 'roughening' robot and a hot oven. He also meets the man who comes up with new designs, including trainers inspired by the three most popular pub names in England.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets hands-on in a tannery to help them process thousands of rawhides into finished leather for the nation's shoes, and finds out how a ballet shoe company painstakingly turns 37,000 square meters of satin into a quarter-of-a-million ballet shoes - some of which only last for one performance. She also gets to design her own court shoes at Cordwainers College in London, where she learns how to turn creative ideas into commercial products - last year, sales of women's designer shoes topped £532 million.And historian Ruth Goodman reveals how, when the sewing machine was first introduced into shoe factories in the mid-19th century, traditional shoemakers went on strike, rebelling against joining a restrictive production line. She also traces the surprising origins of the humble trainer to the back streets of Bolton, where Joe Foster invented his running spike in 1895, above his father's sweet shop, and discovers that Reebok trainers were originally British.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#5 |
Sweets |
23rd Aug 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 5 - "Sweets"
Gregg Wallace helps to unload a tanker full of sugar from Norfolk and follows it through one of the oldest sweet factories in Britain to see how over 500 workers, as well as some mind-boggling machines, transform it into over a hundred million individual sweets within just 24 hours. He discovers how the factory that produces Lovehearts could be the most romantic in the world because one in four of the people who work there are in a relationship with each other, how they make 5,000 Fizzers a minute using a tablet-pressing machine that uses 3 tonnes of pressure to create each sweet, and meets the man in charge of making three quarters of a million Fruity Pop lollies every day.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey is let inside the research and development department and experiences for herself how hard it is to come up with a new product, as she attempts to invent her own version of sherbet using citric acid and sodium bicarbonate. She also finds out how they put the letters in seaside rock by making a giant version and then stretching it to the right size, and is given special access to the Fisherman's Friend factory in Lancashire to discover how a local family turned a niche product into a worldwide success.And historian Ruth Goodman investigates how sweets were first invented and discovers that, in the Middle Ages, they were used as a medicine and thought to reduce flatulence. She also finds out about the human cost of Britain's sweet tooth in the 18th century and how an abolition movement instigated a sugar boycott which helped to end the slave trade.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#4 |
Bicycles |
16th Aug 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 4 - "Bicycles"
Brompton's bicycle factory in West London is the largest in Britain, producing 150 of its distinctive folding bicycles every 24 hours.In the fourth episode of Inside the Factory Gregg joins a multi-stage manual production line to make his very own bike. He'll learn how to put together 1200 individual parts. He'll also attempt to braze a bike frame together using extreme heat of a thousand degrees, a skill that takes years to master. He'll visit a leather saddle maker in Birmingham that's been making saddles for 150 years and discover how they use cowhide from UK and Ireland cows because the cold weather means they have thicker skins.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets some tips from Cycling Team GB to help us all improve our pedal power. She also learns how to paint a bike frame fit for the British weather using an electro-static charge and a 180 degree hot oven. Cherry also investigates why cyclists and trucks are such a deadly combination: in London alone there have been 66 fatalities since 2011 and half of them were collisions with a truck.And historian Ruth Goodman reveals that folding bikes date back to the 1870's, and how 70,000 folding 'parabikes' were manufactured during World War II, some of which played a role in the D-Day landings. She'll also find out how the invention of the safety bicycle in the late 1880's was used by Suffragettes to ride to rallies and spread the word in their fight for equality.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Baked Beans |
9th Aug 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 3 - "Baked Beans"
Today in the UK we get through more than two million cans of baked beans every day, with the average UK household consuming 10 tins of canned food a week. Gregg Wallace helps to unload 27 tonnes of dried haricot beans from North America and follows them on a one and a half mile journey through the Heinz factory in Wigan - the largest baked bean factory in the world - making more than three million cans of beans every 24 hours.He'll discover how a laser scrutinizes every single bean; how the spice recipe for the sauce is a classified secret known only by two people; and, most surprisingly, how the beans are not baked at all!Meanwhile Cherry Healey follows the journey of her discarded baked bean can through a recycling centre and onto the largest steelworks in the UK, where she watches a dramatic, fiery process that produces 320 tonnes of molten steel - enough to make eight million cans.She also takes a can that is 14 months after its ‘Best Before' date to a lab at the University of Coventry and is amazed when tests reveal it has the same Vitamin C levels compared to fresh tomatoes. The lab also proves that a 45 year-old tin of Skippers is still fit to eat.And historian Ruth Goodman looks at how tinned food was invented to improve the nutrition of sailors to prevent them developing scurvy on their long voyages at sea. She'll also relate how Henry Heinz first marketed baked beans in the UK in the early 1900s - making them a family favourite.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Crisps |
2nd Aug 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 2 - "Crisps"
The British love eating crisps. So much so that we get through a staggering half a billion crisps a day - and that takes 17 million potatoes. So why do we love the humble fried potato snack so much, and what are the secrets behind making the perfect crisp?In the second episode of Inside The Factory, Gregg Wallace and Cherry Healey go in search of these answers and discover plenty of surprising facts along the way.We'll see Gregg at the largest crisp factory on earth - Walkers factory in Leicester - as he follows 27 tonnes of potatoes as they are peeled, sliced and fried to make more than five million packets of crisps every 24 hours. He'll discover how each bag is filled with nitrogen to keep the crisps from going stale - and if you ever wondered how a crisp gets it flavour then we'll get to see the inside of the factory's development kitchen, where seasoning begins its crisp life as a real food dish.Meanwhile Cherry Healey discovers the secrets of perfect crisp potatoes, and how it is all down to a potato's sugar content. She also finds out that our noses play a central role in how things taste and ambiance can be as big factor as ingredients. Plus she follows the production of Monster Munch, where the factory transforms 96 tonnes of corn into 12 million monster feet every single day.And historian Ruth Goodman investigates who really invented the crisp: was it the Americans, as is often cited, or the British? Ruth cooks up the earliest known recipe for crisps to uncover the truth.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Cereal |
26th Jul 2016 |
8 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 2, Episode 1 - "Cereal"
Gregg Wallace receives a load of corn fresh off the boat from Argentina and follows its journey through the largest breakfast cereal factory in Europe as it is cooked, milled and flavoured to become Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. He discovers how they can produce more than a million boxes of cereal every 24 hours and distribute them all over the UK, Europe and across the globe, as far away as Malaysia.Meanwhile, Cherry Healey finds out about the immunity-boosting powers of vitamin D, which is added to many of our breakfast cereals. One in five of us is deficient in the sunshine vitamin and yet the latest research shows that having optimum levels can potentially prevent you from getting the common cold by up to 50 per cent. Cherry also discovers the effect that skipping breakfast has on our cognitive function - studies show that breakfast skippers perform seven per cent worse in attention tests - and she also follows the production of the nation's best-selling cereal, Weetabix, and learns how every single grain of wheat that is milled for these wheat biscuits is grown within a 50-mile radius of the factory.Historian Ruth Goodman sits down to a Victorian breakfast of lobster and pig's head to reveal how the average Victorian was gorging down a mind-boggling 4,500 calories a day and that breakfast cereal was invented as a healthy alternative. She also discovers that when it comes to advertising cereal, nostalgia certainly seems to pay - the six top sellers in the UK today were all invented more than 30 years ago and the cereal industry is now worth over one and a half billion pounds.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#3 |
Milk |
7th May 2015 |
9 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 1, Episode 3 - "Milk"
Gregg Wallace gets exclusive access to one of the largest fresh milk processing plants on earth to see how they get milk from cow to carton in less than 24 hours. He reveals how one factory can process 2,000 litres of milk in under a minute and visits the hi-tech British farms where the cows are milked entirely by robots.Cherry Healey discovers how milk is used to make cheese and ice cream on an epic scale and reveals why most people in the world actually can't drink milk - and what makes us unusual in Britain.Historian Ruth Goodman investigates our complicated history with the white stuff and discovers just how tough it would have been to work as a dairy maid.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#2 |
Chocolate |
6th May 2015 |
9 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 1, Episode 2 - "Chocolate"
Gregg Wallace is inside one of the world's largest chocolate factories in York to discover how they produce a staggering seven million bars a day. He'll follow the incredible 24-hour journey - from bean to bar - of one of our best-selling chocolates and meet the team of people who work around the clock to keep up with that demand.Cherry Healey gets hands on with the hundreds of workers on a production line in Derbyshire where the millions of chocolate boxes they produce every year are still surprisingly handmade.Historian Ruth Goodman delves through the chocolate archives to find out what it was like working in the factories before the machines took over, and she meets the people who found love on the production line.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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#1 |
Bread |
5th May 2015 |
9 years ago |
19:00 - 20:00 |
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Season 1, Episode 1 - "Bread"
Gregg Wallace discovers how one of Britain's largest bakeries makes up to one and a half million loaves of bread each week. Following the production of one of the nation's favourite loaves, he uncovers the secrets to baking 4,000 loaves at once and reveals the incredible machine that can bag a loaf of bread in mid-air.Cherry Healey goes inside one of the largest flour mills in the country to discover what it takes to make the perfect flour and reveals the secret science to storing bread at home.And historian Ruth Goodman looks at why we've always been in love with the white loaf and shows the hidden killers that used to lurk in our bread.
Type: Documentary |
Network: BBC Two |
Status: Running |
Rating: unrated [ Login to vote ]
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