BBC ONE HEADS FOR THE SCRAP YARD

BBC One is heading to Bolton for a peak-time observational, character-driven series, Scrappers. The 6 x 30 minute series will introduce larger-than-life TERRY and LYNDSAY WALKER, the husband and wife team behind the North-West’s biggest scrap yard, and the motley crew they employ who form their workforce.

Over the six episodes Scrappers will reveal an uplifting story of second chances and loyalty as it follows straight-talking TERRY and glamorous LYNDSAY as they run their multi-million-pound scrap empire, fall out with each other, and struggle to keep their conventionally unemployable employees on the straight and narrow.

Over the series, the marriage-meets-business rollercoaster sees, amongst many other things, all hell breaking loose as LYNDSAY discovers TERRY spent the week’s payroll at a car auction; LYNDSAY wrestling with TERRY’S new ‘ideas’ to make the yard more profitable; redundancy conversations at a weekly Date Night; a humiliating public argument that leaves a marriage hanging in the balance; a holiday in Tenerife where TERRY decides to watch the yard’s CCTV on a mobile phone and direct operations from the balcony of a penthouse suite; and a realisation that LYNDSAY’S dreams of slowing down are looking like nothing more that pipedream as it’s clear that retirement is the last thing on TERRY’S mind.

Employees including LITTLE DAVE, BOYLE and COXY all rely on TERRY and LYNDSAY – a lot of them couldn’t get a job anywhere else – and we see the team enjoying Christmas parties, making court appearances, preparing for an open day to celebrate 21 years of the business, gaining qualifications, and opening up in the on-site cafe to caterers-come-counsellors, DEBS and MICHELLE. Welcome to the warm, wonderful world of Bolton’s Metro Salvage, the biggest scrap metal yard in the North West.

A Liberty Bell production, the series is produced and directed by PIP BANYARD while executive producers are JAMIE ISAACS and MICHELE CARLISLE for Liberty Bell and acting Head of Commissioning, Science and Natural History TOM MCDONALD for the BBC.
-ends-

For more information please contact: Dan Lloyd at Avalon on: 020 7598 7222 or email: [email protected]

Notes to editors

About Liberty Bell

Liberty Bell Productions, formed in autumn 2002, specialises in the production of television documentaries and features, factual entertainment, current affairs, drama-documentary and youth programming. Productions include: The Three Day Nanny (Channel 4), Dave Gorman Modern Life is Goodish (Dave); Al Murray’s German Adventure (BBC FOUR), Willie’s Wonky Chocolate Factory (Channel 4), Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not For Spurning (BBC FOUR), The Alastair Campbell Diaries (BBC TWO), Frank Skinner on George Formby (BBC FOUR), Three Men In A Boat (BBC TWO), The Grumpy Guides to… (BBC TWO), Grumpy Old Men (BBC TWO), Grumpy Old Women (BBC TWO), Why We Went to War (More 4), Real Life: Beating Breast Cancer (ITV1), The Meaning of Life (BBC ONE) and The Widow’s Tale (BBC TWO).

What the press has said about previous Liberty Bell productions:

Dave Gorman: Modern Life is Goodish

Dave Gorman is a clever and inventive comic… and Modern Life Is Goodish shows why he is so popular.
Simon Horsford, The Daily Telegraph

Portillo on Thatcher: The Lady’s Not For Spurning

Gordon Brown and David Cameron should watch it. Tony Blair should get a hold of a tape and reflect on what might have been. Media bosses who only commission films if they portray politicians as corrupt and mad should take note also… I know people with only a passing interest in politics who were gripped.
Steve Richards, The Independent

The Alastair Campbell Diaries

Just as DVD extras allow you to see the human fallibility that lies behind the polished exterior of the finished film, Campbell’s diary fills in the engrossing trivia of off-stage politics… it is completely engrossing.
Thomas Sutcliffe, The Independent

The Widow’s Tale

This complex and moving film is one of the television highlights of the year so far.
Andrew Male, The Sunday Times

Grumpy Old Men

The whole programme put me into an uncharacteristically, seethingly good mood… Wonderful stuff
A.A. Gill, The Sunday Times

Al Murray’s German Adventure

Murray makes a fine TV historian: interested, articulate and knowledgeable…A breathless hour around a stunning, wintery Germany that will probably leave most viewers wanting more on everything…Al Murray would be our man for the job.
Gabrial Tate, Time Out