Top Gear

[emelius]

just finished watching:


ice cream hovercraft...would have made for a decent t.v. special...

[emelius]

retard button...

i thought tonight's episode was mediocre, but i'm still enjoying how much better the episodes look in hi-def...that feeling probably isn't going to wear off any time soon...

[catscratch]

Season 14 has been thoroughly mediocre thus far, contrived dialogue, meaningless films, and no real honesty or inspiration from the presenters. But the Bolivia Special is old classic Top Gear. So, they can still do it, when they're not chasing after ratings and trying to woo over the casual crowd.

[NightWoundsTime]

I have a feeling that the Bolivia special could have been 3 extended episodes of pure entertainment. I liked it but it felt like a compilation of vehicles breaking down, rather than an old school Top Gear road movie. The first episode of this season had more pure entertainment value than that.

Honesty is the big one though. I've been going back through some of my favorite episodes to figure out when they became so comfortable with lying about absolutely everything. What would be wrong with saying, "Richard's truck can't make it down the hill with only 2 wheels powered, so we're going to show how horribly wrong this could all go." Of course take the damn trash out of it first and make it clear that you're going to pick it up off the side of the hill after it rolls a couple 50 times, thus keeping the environmentalists happy. Instead we get a badly staged 'accident', and some BS about leaving it up there. That shit may eventually wear me down into not liking the show.

"Why would you lie about something dumb like that?
Why would you lie about anything at all?"

-Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma

[pomme de terre]

just finished watching:
http://www.bbcshop.com/content/ebiz/...ed_dvd_300.jpg

ice cream hovercraft...would have made for a decent t.v. special...

I didnt know about this DVD, getting it now thanks!

On the topic of how crappy season 14 has been, heres a blog post by producer Andy Wilman about it (those who are into TG would have seen this already)
Series 14: where we’re at Transmission – BBC Top Gear

There are still three shows to transmit, but they’re all shot and cut now – we’re just tidying up the South America special – so it feels like a good time to reflect on the run.

Personally I’ll be glad to see the back of it. We’ve done some good stuff this series, but we were too rushed and too knackered to get everything right. I’ve never ever ever seen a production team, from presenters to film crew to editors to production team, work so hard over three months, and I think only this lot could pull off what they do.

However what the viewer sees is what they see, and I notice on the interweb that there is a grumble and a rumble in the air from some of our regulars: we’ve lost the plot, we’ve disappeared up our arses, we’re scripting everything, we’re predictable etc etc, so let’s deal with that.

From what I can work out, the main complaints are that there’s too much cocking about for the car lovers, and that we’re trying too hard on camera. I think, if you consider the tastes of the Final Gear folk and the TG diehards, they’d probably say we’ve only done a couple of memorable films in the last year or so – Bonneville Flats, Commie Cars, Japan Race probably. Well, we do know where you’re coming from, and personally I have massive sympathy and empathy for a guy like that Monk chap, who clearly cares, and judging by the way he fills up the worldwide web, is clearly frustrated by what we do on a show he used to love.
However, although we understand the complaints, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to do anything about them. Believe me that’s not arrogance on our part, but the fact is we’re not wedding DJs taking requests, and for good reason, because no good telly in the history of man was ever created that way. You have to make the programme you want to make, and people then vote with the on or off button. So although not many on Final Gear liked the electric car, we actually loved it, and we’ll make more of those any time we get the right idea.

However when we do agree with where the viewers are coming from, then we could be in business. Personally, for example, I do believe we’ve now got the presenters playing to their TV cartoon characters a bit too much – Jezza the walking nuclear bomb, Richard the daft Norman Wisdom, and James the bumbling professor. I like those characters, but I too would like to see more of them as they were in Bonneville, or in Botswana or in the US Special. I miss the three mates who mooch along – there were flashes of it in the Lancia film, and it’s there in the South American Special, and yes, it’s nice to have it back. I know James definitely feels that way, and Jeremy and I were saying the other morning how the Lancia film was a bit of a wake up reminder that we can actually make good films just enthusing about cars.

I’d like to offer my thoughts on a few other points. Firstly, this notion that everything’s scripted. It isn’t. We went to South America with one sheet of A4, Romania with 2 or 3 sheets about the car particulars, Ice Racing the same. Yes we do set a few things up – You won’t find Careless Air in the phone book, and obviously we rang Norwich Airport before James’s caravan airship pitched up, but no, for the millionth time, we don’t pre-arrange races or challenges or petrol stations in Alabama.

I think what you’re seeing with the scripted issue is partly down to the point above about playing to our cartoon characters, partly just old fashioned familiarity, but there’s also a more important issue, and that’s that you’re watching a show that’s lost its innocence. To explain, let’s go back a bit. When we started in 2002, our goal was to make a decent Top Gear, but then, and most important, organically, things took us by surprise. Nobody knew the onscreen chemistry of the trio would be so good, also, none of us saw coming where we could actually go with the films.

Rewatch the Cheap Porsches or the Shit Italian Supercars film, and you’ll see what I mean. That was the first time a car show was making tv out of the cars going wrong, and you can see the surprise and delight on the presenters’ faces as it’s dawning on them, right there in the shoot, how much fun there is to be had out of crap car calamity. You, we, shared the innocence. And so it went on. The America Special wasn’t even meant to be an hour long Special – we went there to make 25 minutes, and shit happened around us – the petrol station etc etc – and again, the surprise in our own faces is visible.
That innocence has gone now, as always happens, because that’s the nature of TV. You all know the main pillars of our editorial, and we do our best to entertain, but none of us are going back to that first flush of discovery.

But although that’s sad, this is not time for glumness because there’s still so much to do. Firstly, please relax if we try this or that and it doesn’t work, because it just means we’re not getting complacent. I can pretty much write that Monk chap’s review of tonight’s show, and boy will he hate Art Gallery, but it is just us pushing in a different direction, because we’re still very much obsessed, as a team, about attempting new things with cars on TV.

The flip side of this is that we’re actually the most disciplined of any formatted TV show when it comes to not relying on our old bankers. It would, for example, be the easiest thing in the world to do a big race every other week – I love a race, I can hardly sleep the night before we shoot one – but we’ve done only a couple in the last two years, and that’s because we won’t attempt one until we can find a good one.

Jeremy has now shot two of those preposterous tests – Fiesta and Twingo, but likewise he’d be happy to call a halt at two if there wasn’t another one to be done. It’s fair to say this incarnation of Top Gear is nearer the end than the beginning, and our job is to land this plane with its dignity still intact. But ironically, that does mean trying new things to the last, even if they screw up, because, well, it means you never stopped trying.

That’s the way it is with content, but as I say, the messages that resonate for me on these web posts are the ones that say: “Can we have our three old mates back?” Well, we will still continue to build electric cars and airships, because we like doing it, but trust me, there’ll be a race the second we find one, and most important we still know how to do a Bonneville, the whole three blokes with cars mooching along, and if you don’t believe me just watch the South America special. And thank you for caring so much.

[catscratch]

Andy hit the nail on the head there; the crux of the problem is that the chemistry between the presenters is gone in favor of them playing cartoon caricatures of themselves. If they fix that, then things may get back on track.

TG has become a ratings machine and everything has been dumbed down to woo over the casual crowd, who'll flock to anything bright and shiny. The problem is that they'll leave the moment something brighter and more shiny comes along, so TG has been trying to be the brightest and the shiniest and thinking all along that what people want to see are silly stunts with cars and three middle-aged blokes falling over. But that wasn't the heart of the show. The show was about three genuinely interesting and entertaining people having fun with cars.

TG may have lots its innocence but there's no need to lose the core of the show that made it what it is in the first place. Decline is inevitable, but in the long term it makes sense to try and put out the best product you possibly can for as long as you can rather than trying to milk everything from a wrong assumption about an incidental winning formula. Stand back and let the presenters be themselves. Let them be as funny and witty and ispired as they can obviously still be.

I think they know this quite well though, and probably feel much the same that we do. So I'm not giving up yet.

[pomme de terre]

Is it just me or did Clarkson call the CR-Z a "CRV" in the last ep

[emelius]

blah...they're trying again:

BBC News - Top Gear to have spin-off in US

what a trainwreck...this iteration seems more along the lines of fifth gear...like most, i won't be watching...& i'm glad to be getting BBC America HD finally...

[Duggeh]

There are too few occassions when the powers that be have said no to some kind of remake even though it would offer money (despite being inevitably crappy).

The only example that springs immediately to mind is when the movie studios all gave the finger to Ben Affleck and J-Lo when they wanted to do a remake of Cassablanca.

[EdipisReks]

Ben Affleck and J-Lo when they wanted to do a remake of Cassablanca.

waaaaahhhhhh?

personally, i think Citizen Kane 2: The Revenge is where it's at.

[NightWoundsTime]

Looking for information on when the next real series of Top Gear starts and coming up short. Anyone got an idea?

[n_maher]

Looking for information on when the next real series of Top Gear starts and coming up short. Anyone got an idea?

I haven't heard or read anything official but historically the spring season has started anywhere from early to late May but more recently mid to late June.

[edit]Shit, just read a report that says July to avoid conflicts with the world cup. Effing soccer.

[Grahame]

Effing soccer.

Globally, that may be a minority viewpoint.

The World Cup was first televised in 1954 and is now the most widely-viewed and followed sporting event in the world, exceeding even the Olympic Games. The cumulative audience of all matches of the 2006 World Cup is estimated to be 26.29 billion.[1] 715.1 million individuals watched the final match of this tournament (a ninth of the entire population of the planet). The 2006 World Cup draw, which decided the distribution of teams into groups, was watched by 300 million viewers.[37]

FIFA World Cup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2010 FIFA World Cup - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[EdipisReks]

minority or not, it's the objective truth.

[jinp6301]

from a subjective viewpoint

[EdipisReks]

from a subjective viewpoint

i can back it up with math.

socker + suck = really suck.

[NightWoundsTime]

I'm normally pretty indeterminate on the subject of soccer, but the fact that it's running all over my Top Gear makes it evil!

[emelius]

way it stands atm, Top Gear should be back the 27th...but they haven't announced past that...i'm pumped to have it back 'round the same time as Futurama...full of win...

[Grahame]

In the meantime, these seem strangely familiar ...

[EdipisReks]

in anticipation of the new series of TG (which i hope is better than the last series!), i watched the last episode of 5th Gear. 5th Gear is a piece of shit that can suck the Stig's barnacles.