Top Gear - New series BBC2

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  • duotoneduotone Frets: 971
    Maybe next series it's time to do a different guest presenter each week ?
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  • jaytmonjaytmon Frets: 167
    Call me cynical but there was probably some contractual obligation to keep LeBlanc for more than one season. Give him a script to learn and get rid of the autocue - surely he'd be better at that. Having said that, the over-scriptedness of the original TG towards the end just annoyed me. Along with Clarkson and Hammond....
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  • 57Deluxe57Deluxe Frets: 7329
    I reckon they need to go back to this..

    https://youtu.be/OWuZyRsRxWU
    I'm staggered that it made it's way though the road test without rusting...
    <Vintage BOSS Upgrades>
    __________________________________
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11413
    jaytmon said:
    Call me cynical but there was probably some contractual obligation to keep LeBlanc for more than one season. Give him a script to learn and get rid of the autocue - surely he'd be better at that. Having said that, the over-scriptedness of the original TG towards the end just annoyed me. Along with Clarkson and Hammond....
    At this point, until someone like Rory Reid is better known, they probably want to have someone who is a bit of a household name.  To be fair to LeBlanc, as I said above, I thought he was better in the last series as Evans sidekick and not the main man.  He's got good comic timing and some of his responses to things Evans said were very well delivered.  Being the central guy reading the autocue doesn't seem to suit him.

    Overall I think they need to work on the studio segments.  The outside films were pretty good but the studio parts weren't as good.  Whether they will improve over time remains to be seen.
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  • BridgehouseBridgehouse Frets: 24579
    57Deluxe said:

    I'm staggered that it made it's way though the road test without rusting...
    Yeah, Noel is pretty prone to rusting up at a moments notice..
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  • holnrewholnrew Frets: 8207
    They're still finding their feet
    My V key is broken
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  • BridgehouseBridgehouse Frets: 24579
    holnrew said:
    They're still finding their feet
    They could do with seeking out their arses and elbows and getting them sorted before looking for their feet...
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  • EricTheWearyEricTheWeary Frets: 16253
    Randomly watching this, MrsTheWeary has expressed an interest as she approves of it getting rid of Clarkson and Evans. 
    It is a programme I don't like much anyway but they've gone from irritating to boring, David Tennant ( and then the free falling down a hill thing, that was a fun four minutes) being the only thing separating it from just watching traffic on the M5 for an hour. It needs something, and not more jokes about LeBlanc's pronunciation (that got old quick). 
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
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  • RandallFlaggRandallFlagg Frets: 13929
    It's crap, kill it. 


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  • jaytmonjaytmon Frets: 167
    holnrew said:
    They're still finding their feet
    Whilst being paid a fortune to do it
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  • mrkbmrkb Frets: 6637
    I enjoyed it- it's back to "fun with cars" rather than the "old men cocking about" that the Grand Tour has become. The Alfa and Supercar sections were good this week!
    Karma......
    Ebay mark7777_1
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  • HeadphonesHeadphones Frets: 981
    Nice to have TV to nap to.

    The earlier observation about Tennant being the life and soul was spot on.

    It's not finding it's feet, it's had them lopped off somewhere around the knees and is stumbling into oblivion.
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  • CirrusCirrus Frets: 8481
    edited March 2017
    Stumbled on the latest episode last night while eating dinner, hadn't seen any since the first 25 minutes of the first episode with Chris Evans in (we turned it off)...

    I think it's... fine. It's competent. But I think in terms of the personalities presenting it, the style of delivery, the pacing, even the soundtrack (i'll get back to this one) it's become a bog-standard 2017 TV production which doesn't stand out from your typical lineup of evening telly.

    The only thing that's wrong with it is that we get to compare it to the very best of the last ~15 years of Top Gear. And I think the thing that made that show so great at times was firstly that it was fresh (for proof, look at how the ratings were going down over the last few seasons as the format became stale), the presenters obviously had a personal stake in the whole endeavor, and the production team were absolutely fantastic.

    Seriously, at its best, the production was the thing that made Top Gear brilliant. The action shots, the choice of when to use slow-mo, blurred speed shots, montages, choice of camera angle, post-effects to enhance the mood of the scene, the voiceovers, and the soundtrack to the features raised the bar and turned it into art. I mention the soundtrack specifically because I think whoever was in charge of that was a genius. When to use a classic piece of '70s rock, or a contemporary dirty electro groove, or that beautiful piece that used Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)"... everything came together to make something greater than the sum of their parts.

    And it went on for long enough that fans will have memories associated with it. For me, it'll be the time around 2006/7 when loads of my friends lived in Birmingham in two big rented houses, and I'd drive over there for the weekend and we'd all sit around with beers and put Top Gear on.

    The magic was that it all came together, and the show seemed to have a soul - an almost tangible entity in itself

    Now, it doesn't. It's the same thing on paper, the same features, the same structure of studio shots, car features, adventures, challenges. But it's like if your favourite band was totally replaced by perfectly competent musicians playing their songs and they went on tour - no matter how much you like the songs, you know it's not the same. So it is with Top Gear. Now it's just a brand name.
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11413
    I think @cirrus is right.  It's the comparisons with the Top Gear of 10 years ago that are the problem.  In isolation it's decent TV, and it also compares well with the last 2 or 3 years of the Clarkson era.  Most of that was very contrived and some of it was downright awful - anyone remember the India Special?
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  • Axe_meisterAxe_meister Frets: 4612
    I think the specials is what made the last top gear the regular stuff was becoming boring

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  • the_jaffathe_jaffa Frets: 1778
    I prefer the current presenter line-up to the Last of the Summer Wine it had got to be before. I really like James May but was always disappointed by the character that he ended up playing on Top Gear. Clarkson can be a good journalist but he was getting increasingly infuriating on TG and Hammond always was and always will be a snivelling little shit.

    I like Matt LeBlanc's dry delivery, Chris Harris is a great driver and has a cracking way of conveying the joy of driving (although he is being scripted into a bit of an odd position especially during the coaching of the guest) and Rory Reid is definitely coming into his own. I very much enjoyed the Alfa and Supercar sections last night and they were beautifully shot.

    I am slightly disappointed that the production team didn't take the chance to reinvent the format a bit more though.
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    I think the specials is what made the last top gear the regular stuff was becoming boring

    The specials were getting increasingly hackneyed too. The Vietnam one and Middle East ones were decent but the India one was shite and the South American one was just barrelscrapingly awful. 
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11413
    the_jaffa said:

    I am slightly disappointed that the production team didn't take the chance to reinvent the format a bit more though.
    They tried that with Evans.  It didn't work so they have done away with the useless rally cross segment, and gone back to the 3 man presenting team.
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  • thumpingrugthumpingrug Frets: 2890
    Ok, been away for the weekend and only just caught up, but was that one just a little bit better.  The interview section is still cringeworthy but either I'm getting used to how shit it is or it has actually improved.  

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  • richardhomerrichardhomer Frets: 24793
    edited March 2017
    Ok, been away for the weekend and only just caught up, but was that one just a little bit better.  The interview section is still cringeworthy but either I'm getting used to how shit it is or it has actually improved.  
    I didn't get to the interview bit. The James Bond bit pissed me off that much that I fired up my Fire Stick and watched the final Grand Tour again. Watching the two back to back reveals the flaw with Top Gear - it's not even mildly funny.
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