DIY SOS is a British DIY television series made for the BBC and presented by Nick Knowles, Lowri Turner, Kate McIntyre and Brigid Calderhead. The series was broadcast from 1999 to 2010 before its current format, DIY SOS: The Big Build from 2010, also presented by Nick Knowles. A total of 243 episodes of DIY SOS and DIY SOS: The Big Build have been broadcast over 32 series.
DIY SOS (1999–2010)
Launched in 1999, after audience figures showed interest in other home makeover shows such as Changing Rooms,DIY SOS was a weekly full builder and designer level renovation of a section of a viewer's home, taken on by a team of professionals after a viewer's DIY project had gone wrong and not been finished. It is the longest running show of its format having been shown for 21 years and has an active dedicated forum.
Launched with presenter Nick Knowles, the format consisted of a main project, and a small project initially headed by Lowri Turner (but after Turner left the show, a number of subsequent presenters were used for the smaller segment), and a viewer call-in vote format voting for one of three families who have made short video pitches for their projects to be addressed in the following programme.
An episode filmed in June 2009 was not broadcast after a domestic incident where a man held his wife hostage at gunpoint before shooting himself, the week before the intended broadcast. The episode is believed to have included the fitting of a new kitchen into the couple's semi-detached home.[1]
In 2010, following the success of a pilot under the same name, the show was reformatted into an hour-long series titled DIY SOS: The Big Build, where the team now enlists the help of local tradesmen, suppliers and the larger community to help deserving families. As the title suggests, the projects often involve "ambitious" construction work such as building a loft conversion or extension. In October 2015, The Big Build's "Veterans Village" special achieved a 34% audience share (with viewing figures of 9.6million), the biggest in the series' history.
In June 2023, the BBC put the series up for tender as part of the company's "competitive tender" policy.[2] In May 2024, it was announced that the Welsh-based South Shore had won the bid to produce the series.[3]
Following the transition to the Big Build format, according to Stuart Heritage of The Guardian, the show is now a "big hitter", explaining that "Pound for pound [it] offers far more emotional heft than almost anything else on television". In its previous format, the show had, in his view, merely "burbled along pointlessly", lacking ambition or an emotional connection with viewers.[5]
Garden SOS (2003)
On 7 July 2003, the BBC announced a sister show to DIY SOS, to be called Garden SOS. Running for only one series, it was first broadcast on BBC One from 4 September to 21 October 2003. Using the same format as DIY SOS, it was to tackle gardens instead of houses. Described by a reviewer as a hybrid between DIY SOS and Ground Force, the show featured a red and blue team of experts sent to work on different projects.
It was presented by television presenter Andy Collins and garden designer Ann-Marie Powell. As with DIY SOS, viewers were given the chance via a telephone vote to select the projects in each subsequent episode. Reviewing the first episode for the Radio Times, David Butcher described the series as "all good fun", but lacking in gardening related content, and suggested this was one garden makeover series too many in an increasingly saturated market. There were six episodes in total.
Regenerate the garden of Raffles Community Centre in Carlisle
International editions
The format was sold to RTÉ in Ireland in 2019, with episodes to be presented by Baz Ashmawy expected to air in 2020.[12]
Controversy
In May 2021, it was reported that Nick Knowles was holding crisis talks with the BBC regarding his job as the main host of DIY SOS due to his appearance in a Shreddies TV advert, which violated BBC's commercial agreements and guidelines.[13] A week later, the BBC announced that they have resolved the issue and Knowles will return to his DIY SOS role with filming to resume in the coming months and he was expected to be back on screens in 2022.[14]
