American Restoration: Volume 1 by A&E Entertainment

Actors

• Rick Dale

Format

• Color
• NTSC

Editorial Review

Rick Dale has a passion, and that passion is making beat-up old stuff look sparkling new. Be it a classic refrigerator or a soft drink cooler, a popcorn machine or a golf cart, or truly esoteric stuff like a NASA space helmet or a device that x-rays your feet, he and his team of cantankerous personalities will strip it down, polish it up, replace missing parts, re-create parts that are truly lost, and paint. The results look downright beautiful. This display of craft and commitment is wonderful, so it's annoying that American Restoration keeps trying to hype things by implying fearsome deadlines or strange and impossible challenges–frankly, Rick does pretty much the same thing over and over, with the occasional novel technique. The craftsmanship is pleasure enough; there's no need to make it seem like a macho feat, except that reality television as a genre seems to depend upon manufactured drama. Ignore all that and just relish the industrial design of the early 20th century–they really don't make stuff like this any more. American Restoration: Volume One has no extras, just 16 half-hour episodes. —Bret Fetzer