The LEGO Story airs tonight on Channel 5

A new documentary, The LEGO Story, airs tonight on Channel 5 at 8.00pm.

The LEGO Story airs tonight on Channel 5, an all-new documentary that covers the company’s early years, successful decade of growth and hear from fans of the brick. Set your box to record from 8.00pm, when the one hour special wll screen this evening.

Here is the official description from Channel 5:

The Lego Story is an unashamedly celebratory documentary charting the remarkable history of the world’s most popular, enduring and commercially successful ‘toy’.

It takes us from the company’s origins in 1930s Denmark, when the Christiansen family [sic] started creating wooden toys, to the development in the 1950s of that most iconic piece of engineering genius, the Lego brick – and its world-conquering journey way beyond the mere confines of the toy department.

After a downturn around the turn of the millennium, as online games and the internet gripped a new generation of children, the company reconsidered its position, opened itself up more to its millions of fans around the world and, became an essential tie-in to major movie releases – ultimately emerging as one of the funniest and smartest movie franchises of them all, in its own right.

After the release of The Lego Movie, with a slew of new products, designs and even its first factory in China, Lego sales beat rival Mattel’s for the first time ever – and it was for a time the biggest toy manufacturer in the world. Its revival has been hailed as the greatest turnaround in corporate history.

We’ll hear from historians, celebrity aficionados, engineers and gifted Lego fanatics – all contributing to the unique and fascinating story of how this humble brick has developed and adapted over the decades, becoming more and more sophisticated and cleverly keeping up with the modern digital world. With 400 billion bricks having been produced so far, amazingly the first ones (from 1958) remain entirely compatible with those currently being manufactured.

Lego is clearly now an essential part of our global DNA – and this hour-long special glories in a success story which really will appeal to viewers of all ages in the lead-up to Christmas.

The LEGO Story will air on Channel 5 tonight, December 18, at 8.00pm. The documentary will be repeated on December 31 at 7.00pm.