Discovery restores Salvage Hunters

Salvage Hunters: Classic Cars will return for a second season

DOC/FEST: Discovery-owned Quest in the UK has ordered three new seasons of Salvage Hunters as well as returns for two spin-offs from the show.

Salvage Hunters, produced by Curve Media, will get 45 new episodes on Quest, while Salvage Hunters: The Restorers and Salvage Hunters: Classic Cars will return for second season runs, having premiered earlier this year.

“We’ve taken a big brand, Salvage Hunters, then spun it off in a very specialist factual way which centres on the restoration of items,” said Ed Sayer, head of original commissioning at Discovery, here at Doc/Fest in Sheffield.

Sayer said the commission of the shows had been a risk because they make for “very slow TV,” but added that they offer viewers space to unpack the history of the items featured.

The exec also revealed more details of a new survival show fronted by a British explorer. Ed Stafford: First Man Out is produced by Beach House Pictures and sees the ex-soldier go up against some of the world’s top survival experts in the extreme conditions.

“It’s the first ever survival show, to my knowledge, that’s been shot in 4K,” Sayer told Doc/Fest delegates. Appearing as part of a commissioning panel on specialist factual content, he added: “Keeping entertainment in the heart of survival is important.”

Sayer said shared experiences and universal truths were fundamental themes of the Discovery’s commissioning strategy.

“A third of all our viewers are women and what we do as a commissioning team is try to find shared experiences,” he said. “The ideas are always going to be predominantly male-first but they have to be inclusive, so we try to find the broadest subject matters and dig deep to look for compelling questions as part of our proposition.”

He added that Discovery in the US had shown more willingness to back UK commissions in recent years.