Men of the world unite – this is Top Gear. The ultimate car show. Forget the charade that is Fifth Gear over on Channel 5. BBC Two’s beloved Top Gear is the pinnacle of motoring shows.
Made by the Beeb and hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, this hourly show has been made for years now – orginally it was more of a basic motoring review show with the likes of Clarkson and Tiff Needell, but it was completely revamped in 2002 and brought in May and Hammond to not only review brand new cars – often sporty ones or ridiculous super cars – but to task part in tasks to produce entertainment.
The show isn’t religiously broken down into section but there are various parts of the show which occur each week. There’s always a “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” who will try a lap around the Top Gear track in a Chevrolet Lacetti. Hardly a world better in the car world, it was originally a Suzuki Liana, which was arguably even worse!! The celebrity will come in, have a chat with Clarkson about various thigns such as their car history and whatever they happen to be promoting, and then importantly they’ll get onto highlights of the lap…and reveal their time compared with all the others that have come before them.
There’s also the “Cool Wall”, which will see the presenters asking where new cars rank in terms of coolness. There’s always so underline gag to make what seems an obviously cool car not be…such as one of the presenter buying one themselves!
Each week they’ll review at least a couple of new cars coming to the market – as previously mentioned they will tend to be on the expensive scale of things, but Top Gear has become a glamourous motor show rather than an advise tool these days. Once they’ve been tested by one of the guys, the world-renowned Stig takes it for a drive (I say world renowned, I probably mean cult figure!!) – the identity of the Stig is a closely guarded secret but it’s believed to be an ex-Formula 1 test driver. At last look I believe it was meant to be Ben Collins, but that’s never been confirmed. As with the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car section, they’ll compare his times with previous records on the track. As you’d expect, various Ferraris, Porsches and Lamborghinis are at the top of the list.
Then there will be challenges. Sometimes it will dominate entire episodes such as when they went and drove across the Deep South of America. Other times it will involve buying a rusty heap of a car and putting it through a number of challenges until one of the cars finally dies on them! With the show still going strong after so many series since the revamp, it’s hard to see where the production team can really take the show next, so it’ll be interesting to see what occurs when a new series arrives in the near future.
Recommend it?? Of course! Even if you’re not a ‘petrolhead’, it’s still first class entertainment…unless you watch it religiously each day on Dave!!
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Oct 29th, 2009
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