Top Gear

[leviramsey]

[tonyh29]

seems a new Stig is to be selected from the "Stig Farm"

[leviramsey]

Just watched the debut episode of The American version of Top Gear... apart from the promos for Ancient Aliens and the Third Reich, it was not as execrable as I was expecting. The Viper vs. Cobra helicopter bit was at least mildly entertaining (though I understand it's essentially lifted from a bit in the original); Buzz Aldrin's "Big Star, Small Car" segment was meh, but the Lambo comparo was well done.

LA Times"]

It's been three years in the making. It's involved three different networks. Hundreds of hosts were auditioned.

Well, the U.S. version of Top Gear finally debuted on History last night, and I've got to say: It isn't the abomination I expected. In fact, it's actually good.

Tanner Foust, Rutledge Wood and Adam Ferrara are a solid trio, and the format is a fast-paced and beautifully shot mix of clever vehicular juxtaposition and sports-car fantasy, history, stunts and stats.

Although the American version is more fan-boy and less gear-headed and critical of cars than the British original, the three hosts have a genuine on-screen chemistry. And they're different enough from one another that it works. Representing American car culture from three corners of the country, Foust is a race- and stunt-car driver from So Cal, Wood is a NASCAR reporter from Georgia, and Ferrara is a stand-up comedian from New York.

Foust is clearly the most technically adept of the bunch. Without him, "Top Gear" would have absolutely no credibility. An expert flogger of four wheels, who not only drives a Dodge Viper but speaks about the car with authority in the debut episode, he's a pretty boy with a Playboy mouth. Wood plays the huggable, happy-go-lucky sidekick who's just happy to survive riding shotgun as Foust evades a Cobra military helicopter.

Ferrara is best when he's unscripted, dropping killer lines, including this brilliant metaphor: Speeding toward 180 mph in the Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera on an open desert highway, he says, is "like being aroused at gunpoint."

Bring on the Bugatti Veyron.

NY Times"]

At the beginning of each episode of “Top Gear,” History Channel’s adaptation of the popular British automotive show, the host Adam Ferrara lists things that the American version will not do. No makeovers, no cooking, no singing and dancing, no emotional journeys, no Snooki.

This bit of macho posturing is understandable — it’s there to assure members of the highly desirable young-male demographic that yes, this is a show designed for them — but it’s not entirely honest. The British “Top Gear” became a worldwide hit by following — pioneering, actually — the golden rule of reality television: that any subject or concept can appeal to a wide audience if you find the right balance of competition and destruction (the childlike smashing of large objects) with humor, sentiment and pretty locations.

The American show, which has its debut on Sunday night, tries to achieve the same result by hewing to the same formula — slavishly might be an overstatement, but very, very closely.

Three male hosts josh and jibe and introduce taped segments while an audience stands around them, an attractive woman nearly always placed behind the speaker’s right shoulder. There is a silent, helmeted, mystery test driver dubbed the Stig. The “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” segment, in which a midlevel celebrity does a one-lap time trial in an economy car, has become “Big Star, Small Car.”

As in the British show, the segments include some straight performance tests — in the first episode, we see which of three Lamborghini models hits the highest speed in a standing mile — and a lot of stunts.

A Dodge Viper does a loop through a small Southern town while being tracked by a Cobra attack helicopter; a Mitsubishi Evo races two skiers down a mountain in the Sierra Nevada; the hosts compete in “drifting” — tricks involving oversteering a car into skids and spins — with a blind man. (The riskier sequences are photographed and edited in such a way that you can’t see who’s actually driving the car.)

The result — for the person with a casual interest in cars, anyway — is a show that at this point lacks the character of the British original but is, particularly in its second and third episodes, reasonably entertaining by American reality-TV standards. (The British show has been on the air in its current format since 2002.)

The gap between the shows — which easily could have been much wider — can be attributed to problems in translation, beginning with the hosts: the actor and comedian Mr. Ferrara, the stunt driver Tanner Foust and the racing analyst Rutledge Wood. They’re somewhat younger and significantly more bland and callow than their British counterparts, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, who, to be fair, have had more time to develop their on-screen personas.

The Americans fit into a production that, through the three episodes available to critics, is more straitlaced than its counterpart — that’s wary of driving outside the lines. Even when the concepts sound potentially wild, the execution doesn’t have the glee or flair of the British show, no matter how much the American hosts laugh and whoop and high-five over one another’s exploits.

While plenty of mild humor is dispensed on the subject of manliness — and the second episode ends with a seeing-eye dog urinating on stage — the overall feel of the show is the gee-whiz earnestness bordering on sanctimoniousness that is the default position of much of American reality TV. One result is that some of the segments feel more like auto advertisements than they do in the British show.

That the new “Top Gear” is on the History Channel, rather than a network like Spike or MTV, certainly has something to do with that affect. One area where the American show is superior to the original is the amount of actual technical information it relays on cars and driving.

In a show about cars, of course, the very idea of Americanness can’t help but be both a practical and an emotional issue. The show is put together by the American division of BBC Worldwide Productions, with an American executive producer, Scott Messick, whose résumé includes reality shows like “Destroy Build Destroy” and “Celebrity Bull Riding Challenge.”

The producers seem to be trying to play down the patriotic angle as much as possible, though in the moonshine competition, where each host had to buy a car for $1,000 and then drive it in rugged conditions in the North Carolina hills, Mr. Foust was ragged for buying a 1987 Nissan. (He won.)

Provincialism leaks out in the hosts’ off-the-cuff remarks, however. Driving a Lamborghini, Mr. Wood complains about seats “clearly designed for a 5-foot-tall Italian man”; driving Aston-Martins, he notes that the speedometers don’t accord with the cars’ capabilities and repeatedly sounds off about British liars. In one jaw-dropping moment, Mr. Foust notes that the Mitsubishi company has made things other than cars, including the World War II fighter plane known as the Zero: “One of the best business models on the planet: build it, jump in, crash it into a ship.”

The real test, though, lies in the numbers. Through three episodes, the featured cars — the ones actually driven in races or stunts — have included six imports and three domestics, and two of the American cars were $1,000 junkers from the 1980s. If the show doesn’t adjust that balance, it may have some explaining to do.

[wiganvillain]

Anyway,

The real thing is back in January, ticket applications at "The Applause Store"

[Genie]

Are there any "specials" imminent?

[Chindie]

Christmas special, mentioned up page. They're travelling to Bethlehem apparently.

As for an American version, if it isn.t godawful I'll be shocked. A lot of the appeal of Top Gears humour for me is its British sensibility, and I can't see a Yank version nailing it in anything other than a sloppy imitation that reeks of the younger brother copying it's sibling. Badly.

[The_Rev]

The American version got a bit of a kicking on Twitter yesterday.

I'm still not sure why other English language versions are needed. I can totally understand why the Germans might want a German language version, but in countries who speak English, just import the original and best version. I didnt need a British version of The Wire set in Brixton in order to enjoy the show did I?

[leviramsey]

So far it's spawned two English-language adaptations: Australia and America. I don't think there's going to be any more, if only because the rest of the English-speaking world has car cultures (and car availabilities) that ape one of the three.

[regular_john]

The American version got a bit of a kicking on Twitter yesterday.

I'm still not sure why other English language versions are needed. I can totally understand why the Germans might want a German language version, but in countries who speak English, just import the original and best version. I didnt need a British version of The Wire set in Brixton in order to enjoy the show did I?

True, but you are aware of a world outside of the borders of this great nation. The same can't be said for some (but not all) of our American cousins. They need a US version of everything, anything else would just be unpatriotic and communist.

[tonyh29]

The American version got a bit of a kicking on Twitter yesterday.

What with most twitters being fruitcakes and nut-jobs isn't anything that Twiiter dislikes a good thing ?

[The_Rev]

Now that's a sweeping generalization par excellence!

[tonyh29]

yeah thought it seemed appropriate for a Clarkson related thread :-)

[Tegis]

[dudevillaisnice]

Sweet, look forward to it.

[tonyh29]

is there an air date for these yet ?

[dudevillaisnice]

The episodes will be screened on 21 and 26 December respectively.

[trekka]

Anyone watch this last night? I thought it was a bit rubbish

[Genie]

I watched it last night, thought it was alright, heaps of obviously scripted disasters but ok. I was surprised sky planner said it was episode 7 of 7, what happened to the other 6? Did I miss them all or were they repeats?

[tonyh29]

Not the best episode ever

Probably because it was

A) Super cars

and

America

that it wasn't up to its usual standard

but still a good way to kill 67 minutes of time

really expected May to come out of a barn in "Intercourse" with a full bucket and a white mustache saying " I milked your cow" ( 5 VT bonus points for the first person to get the link )

[Gingerlad]

Good to see they're not bitter about all The Stig controversy.