Watching the season premier now... and good God it is awful. Chris Evans is trying entirely too hard to hard to be Jeremy without Clarkson's charm. [Reply]
They've had some really great stuff, and some pretty tedious stuff. I'm curious to see how long they continue to mention a celebrity and then watch them die. [Reply]
I really liked this at first, because the celebrity appearances were the one part I usually skipped past on Top Gear. It is getting rather redundant though. I'd almost like them to come out and just say, "OK, we're bored too. You all know we've killed the celebrity portion of our show. Moving on..." Heck, it might actually be fun if they do something like that, move on to news, then have an A lister walk out of the audience with his own chair and sit at the table and go on a monologue about why the Morris Minor is the greatest care ever made, while the hosts stare in wonder.
OK, maybe not. I'd probably laugh. But yeah, that bit is getting tedious. I do like Conversation Street though. [Reply]
It's pushed a little too far towards the scripted stuff, IMO.
The butler during the Namibia specials was just unnecessary and removed you from the 'event'. That awful, awful, special forces training bit (seriously the worst thing I've ever seen from them). The Christmas presents thing during the christmas episode where they were stumbling about on wheeled implements. I'd have to go back a bit but every episode seems to have a tedious scripted spot where you realize that maybe 17 minutes of commercials did these guys a bit of good. They probably only have 30-35 minutes of quality television per episode and when there's not 15 minutes or so of it taken away for commercial (and another 10 minutes of celebrity interview that I skipped anyway), they're left with a lot of space to fill and no great way to do it right now. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
It's pushed a little too far towards the scripted stuff, IMO.
The butler during the Namibia specials was just unnecessary and removed you from the 'event'. That awful, awful, special forces training bit (seriously the worst thing I've ever seen from them). The Christmas presents thing during the christmas episode where they were stumbling about on wheeled implements. I'd have to go back a bit but every episode seems to have a tedious scripted spot where you realize that maybe 17 minutes of commercials did these guys a bit of good. They probably only have 30-35 minutes of quality television per episode and when there's not 15 minutes or so of it taken away for commercial (and another 10 minutes of celebrity interview that I skipped anyway), they're left with a lot of space to fill and no great way to do it right now.
They are almost the exact same length as the old top gear which was within +/- a few minutes of an hour like clockwork. Some of the celebrity interview stuff and them driving was pretty fun unless it was someone only British people liked which wasn't that uncommon.
Completely agree on the overly scripted or trying too hard bits being sprinkled in that I don't care for but overall fairly enjoying this other than that dreadful second episode. One thing that is falling very flat for me is the new track and the cringeworthy comments on the new driver. [Reply]
Originally Posted by unlurking:
That was an excellent piece. They've been doing a great mix of stuff on the new show that I've really enjoyed.
Over the years those historical type pieces from May or Clarkson have been really damn good. This was probably the best since the one on Senna. [Reply]
