Gunpowder Plot TV recreation may be shelved after bombs

A MULTI-MILLION pound British TV recreation of the Gunpowder Plot may have to be shelved as a result of the London bombings.

ITV had planned to blow up a full-size replica of the House of Lords using 36 barrels of gunpowder in a bid to show what would have happened if Guy Fawkes’ plot had succeeded.

The show is billed as “the biggest historical and scientific experiment ever seen on television”.

But ITV bosses now face having to shelve the November broadcast if the public consider the subject distasteful.

The life-size, structurally exact replica of the House of Lords is being built at a secret Ministry of Defence site and will be filled with crash test dummies to represent the politicians who would have been in parliament on November 5, 1605.

The programme asks: “Could any of England’s 150 most rich and powerful have survived the blast? How would London have looked post detonation? How much of Westminster village would have been destroyed?”

Presented by Top Gear’s Richard Hammond, the programme was to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the plot and was set to be one of the highlights of ITV’s autumn season.

Speaking at the launch, ITV’s director of channels Nigel Pickard said: “It is a historical reconstruction which explains what the impact would have been on London. Obviously it is supposed to go out in November but we will review the sensitivities as we get closer to the time.”