Is it me or has Top Gear passed its peak performance?
The programme used to be entertaining but now it’s the same thing every week, just variations on a theme. And while they may be good themes, everything has its day and eventually become tired and repetitive. The format worked for a while but it’s getting predictable.
The presenters – Clarkson, Hammond and May (sounds like a firm of solicitors when put like that) – dress in jacket and jeans each week and are, frankly, getting on a bit for the sort of antics they get up to and the target audience they are trying to attract. Irritating things about them include James May’s bad shirts and haircut, Richard Hammond’s necklace and all of Jeremy Clarkson.
Hard luck, Jezza, stick to the 99p DVDs
The witty banter between the three of them is also predictable. They rubbish each others opinions and taste in cars and at the end of the programme you feel you haven’t really learnt anything useful.
Each week expensive supercars get hammered around a test track with a Boeing 747 in the background, tyres smoking, by our trio of hooligans who are over-critical about what is really some wonderful engineering and well out of the reach of the ordinary man or woman in the street.
Various celebrities are dragged into the studio to drive a ‘reasonably-priced car’ and, again, it’s the same week-in week-out. Watch Clarkson drop his usual opinionated stance at this point and fawn over the guests. At some point they usually try to humiliate a member of the audience as well.
Then we have the ridiculous challenge, where they have drive against a train or a plane or each other, facing bizarre ‘challenges’ along the way. Again, it’s been entertaining but it’s also hard to gauge just how much of it is staged.
You also wonder at what point they’re going to come unstuck with their stunts. They almost lost Hammond a while back when he crashed a land speed record car and you can’t help but feel that they’re living on borrowed time, especially when tearing around some hairpin bends in the alps.
Imagine the traffic jam behind them
The programme is actually getting embarrassing. Last week they built an electric car and took it on the roads. How surprising that its batteries ran down and that they caused traffic jams. Bet you didn’t see that coming. The whole thing was stupid and contrived.
As for the Stig? Some say that people are getting bored of him and the whole show. And I’m one of them.
Who are you? Meh...
Comment by Robert Bravery November 24, 2009
I quite like it. It makes for good fun and a good laugh. Yeah some things are of the same theme, But then so many other things are just the same in the entertainment industry.
How many Survivor shows, Pop Idols, X-factor?
Movies, there hasn’t been a new movie for decades. All the same theme. But we watch them anyway, they make millions and billions.
Nothing new under the sun
Comment by Mike CJ November 24, 2009
How funny – I watched episode 2 last night of the current series. And I came to a similar conclusion.
What used to be cutting edge and feel a little dangerous, just somehow seems to come across as the jolly japes of a bunch of middle aged guys.
Hopefully, things will get better as the series unfolds.
Comment by Gareth Crew November 24, 2009
@Robert – Interesting that you’re putting Top Gear in the same bracket as X-Factor, but surely they try to jazz it up with new, awful presenters and acts? TG is just the same place, same things. The only thing that changes is Richard Hammonds’ hair.
@Mike CJ – Perhaps they’re saving the really big stunts for later in the series, but they may have run out of ideas.
Comment by RobGT November 24, 2009
You may be right that the formula is getting a tad stale, but I’m a middle-aged bloke who woul love to join in the banter with some like-minded blokes, thrash expensive cars round a test track, be critical and stereotypical and take part in challenges all over the world on exciting roads in great, great cars.
And that’s why it’s still successful – some of us live vicariously through Clarkson, May and Hammond.
Long live the big kids!
Comment by Paul November 24, 2009
Well I’m hoping its just a duff episode, but at the end of the day its just a entertainment program which has done what it says on the tin for a good few years. Everyone slips up sooner or later.
Comment by Chris Garrett November 24, 2009
I missed the first episode of this season but I laughed out loud more than once on the most recent one. While it can still make me laugh it is worth watching. I would much rather watch TG than most of the other tripe that’s trotted out in return for our ludicrous television tax :)
It’s the best comedy on television, bar none.
Comment by Gareth Crew November 24, 2009
@Chris – ah, see Chris, you’re comparing it to other shows, not Top Gear as it was. Compared to other shows, that were mentioned by @RobGT, then yes, perhaps.
Lovng the Tax comment, I always wondered about a TV License when I was young, thought you had to take a test of current TV events. If that was the case, I think I’d fail!
Comment by Herve November 24, 2009
So much agree, no creativity at all, my 3 yrs old son could write up the next episode. Don’t need to elaborate, the article is bang on! BBC, pls kill it
Comment by robert November 26, 2009
I agree entirely, I have always loved cars and don’t like to see good engineering and design slagged off.
Also never liked the patronising “Star in a reasonably priced car” feature, oh how funny it is to see a rich person driving a family car that most of TG’s audience can only afford. Good point too about oppinionated Clarkson going all weak at the knees with whatever celeb is on. Time for it to go.