TV preview: EU referendum results; Britain’s Most Spectacular Backyard Builders; Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities

EU referendum results broadcasts, Thursday, Sky News 9.30pm; BBC1 9.55pm; ITV 10pm; Britain’s Most Spectacular Backyard Builders, BBC2, Tuesday 8pm; Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities, BBC2, Thursday 9pm

David Dimbleby adjudicates as Tony Benn (left) and Roy Jenkins (right) debate about the European Economic Community on a 1975 BBC ‘Panorama’ referendum special (Getty)

Never mind Remain vs Leave: the TV highlight of next week will surely be the three-corned battle of the broadcasters’ results shows – BBC vs Sky vs ITV. Each has its own attractions, and of course as we go through the night you can happily switch between the three to see who has the most innovative graphics, the most informative presenters and gets there first with the results. Why not make a night of it, with some European-themed food and drink – stock up on tapas, Guinness, Chianti, pickled herrings, curry wurst, Camembert, Wagon Wheels... it’s going to be a long old night. As prep, I recommend finding the online footage of the BBC’s 1975 referendum results show, then as this week, presented by David Dimbleby, but then with the peerless Professor David Butler and Robin Day. Dimbleby’s longevity must be some sort of televisual record: surely you’d not want to miss such a historic moment?

By the way, it is very heartening to see the ITV crew once again putting up a bit of fight. Too often they have simply left the field and allowed the BBC and Sky to dominate the political field. ITV has a proud tradition in current affairs and news programming, and there are signs of revival, thanks to some excellent journalists – Tom Bradby and Robert Peston, for example – and they deserve an all-night session. I’m not saying I miss ITV’s 24-hour news channel necessarily, but I think something more like it would fulfil ITV’s public service remit.

Britain’s Most Spectacular Backyard Builders is a sort of cross between Scrapyard Challenge and Wallace and Gromit. If you ever wondered what all those middle-aged men do in the privacy of their sheds – here is the answer. Peter and Merv, for example, confessed they once “spent a whole day trying to get a squelching noise”. I must say that I too have has fun spending my spare time on that, so I applaud their efforts. They are the ultimate in crank inventors – as indeed were all the participants – in inventing things for the sake of it, rather than, say, bombarding sub-nuclear particles or developing a driverless car. I much enjoyed the 8-tonne, 8ft tall nutcracker with 2,000 moving parts – literally taking the old saying about a “sledgehammer to crack a nut” and making a little commentary about our wasteful, materialistic society in the process.

The competitors are given 10 weeks and £2,500 to make their fantasy objects come alive, and you should enjoy the sheer eccentricity of it all. By the end, will there be a properly functioning breakfast-making machine, a sweet-dispensing carousel and an incredibly powerful robot? Or just some scrap and disappointed partners and kids…? Let; just say the genius of the British is their gift for improvisation.

I have to warn you that you really have to like frat boys to want to watch Frat Boys: Inside America’s Fraternities. On the plus side: they represent a significant contribution to the problem of housing the US’s student population. On the minus side: everything else. Not as funny as Animal House, anyhow.