The Secret Life of Machines is an educational television series presented by Tim Hunkin and Rex Garrod, in which the two explain the inner workings and history of common household and office machinery.

[1] According to Hunkin, the show's creator, the programme was developed from his comic strip The Rudiments of Wisdom, which he researched and drew for the Observer newspaper over a period of 14 years.

Each programme concluded with an epilogue consisting of an elaborate installation, which resembled an aspect of the machine or technology under discussion.

One example was a giant statue resembling a robot, which had been built from scrap computer monitors, printers and other parts, which was blown up using pyrotechnics.

All the series used a combination of mechanical models and animation to help explain various aspect of how the subject devices function.

The 8 weekly episodes included what Hunkin has learned through his experience with the component, along with many models for demonstration and examples from his amusement machines and other works.

[11] In the epilogue for the remastered version of the episode, Hunkin mentions that the clock has been non functional for a long time.

These were upscaled from an analogue video source to improve the image quality and include a short, recently filmed reminiscence by Hunkin at the end of each episode.