Tag: Season 14

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Top Gear

Top Gear enters Season 15 with “decade’s greatest” title

Top Gear - Bolivia special

UPDATE 7 June: The boys will be back on UK screens from 27 June.

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Top Gear, fresh off the back of its fourteenth season, has just been named the “Greatest TV Show of the Noughties”. This news is the culmination of a poll run by Channel 4 in the UK, the results of which will air on British television screens next week.

Richard Hammond, one of Top Gear‘s star trio, said, “I could never say what the reason is for Top Gear doing so well since we started it, but I think there’s always a sense that we’d still be doing it even if the cameras weren’t here and that makes it real.”

Of course, BBC2 first broadcast the original format of Top Gear back in the late 1970s. However, while it enjoyed a stellar run of some 24 years, at the start of the 2000s the show was cancelled. This paved the way for the emergence of Fifth Gear on Channel Five. But it wasn’t long until the BBC relaunched Top Gear with the current format running since 2002.

Series 14 has attracted some criticism and the program’s long time Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, felt the need defend the show’s direction posting comments on the Top Gear website.

Going into Series 15, then, Top Gear faces its toughest test in some time. Will the baggage of the decade’s greatest title add to the burden of recent criticism, or will it spur the production team on to bigger and better things? While I do think Top Gear will finish before it makes a twentieth season, I do expect that Season 15 will rectify some of the wrongs committed in recent series. Wilman and his trusty trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are no mugs, they will put things right.

We shall find out later this year when Season 15 goes to air. If it wasn’t for the 2010 FIFA World Cup I would nominate 19 June as the premiere date, however, the football may mean an early start in May with a hiatus before recommencing in July. This is what BBC did with Season 8 so as to avoid clashing with Germany 2006.

[Source: The Press Association]

Categories
Top Gear

I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like

Top Gear 14x05

Internet criticism has led to Top Gear‘s Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, to write an article defending the show. In line with the old adage about criticising art it would seem many an internet fan doesn’t know much about producing a television show, but they know what they like. And, according the the masses, they don’t like Season 14 of Top Gear which is more than half way through its current run.

Wilman admits that the crew has been up against it this series, “Personally I’ll be glad to see the back of it. We’ve done some good stuff this series, but we were too rushed and too knackered to get everything right.”

He also understands that they may have pigeon-holed the three presenters too tightly, “I do believe we’ve now got the presenters playing to their TV cartoon characters a bit too much – Jezza the walking nuclear bomb, Richard the daft Norman Wisdom, and James the bumbling professor.”

But Wilman also explains that the show’s philosophy is to never die wondering if a new idea will work, “it is just us pushing in a different direction, because we’re still very much obsessed, as a team, about attempting new things with cars on TV.”

At the end of Season 13 there was much talk that it marked the end of the road for Top Gear. While that turned out to be more internet scuttlebutt, Wilman does reveal the end of the show will happen sooner, rather than later, “It’s fair to say this incarnation of Top Gear is nearer the end than the beginning, and our job is to land this plane with its dignity still intact.”

If you’re a fan of the show and haven’t already seen Wilman’s blog, take the time to follow the link below, it’s a very worthwhile read.

[Source: TopGear]

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Fifth Gear

Fifth Gear – Season 14, Episode 5

The shootout saw Jason Plato in a Lexus IS-F with Tiff Needell in a BMW M3 saloon. The Bimmer was quicker round the track. Just. But no surprise that the Toyota felt softer and more distant. Tom pitted the new Subaru Forester against a Land Rover Freelander II. He reckoned the Forester was tinny and under powered. He wasn’t much of a fan of the auto transmission either. A weclome addition to the cast this week was the Nissan GT-R and the Porsche 911 Turbo. Oh yeah, and Bruno Senna. Fittingly, he was fanging the cars around a wet track in conditions that his uncle would have loved (see clip above). I say, flick Tiff and replace him with Bruno.

Vicki filed a report from a tribute to Colin McRae which saw 1086 Impreza WRXs spell out his name. She also got a fang in McRae’s 1996 WRC winning car. Very tidy indeed! Tom had a go in the Dodge Challenger SRT8. I have to say it looks pretty damn good—for an American coupé. Vicki got the keys to a Vauxhall Astra VXR Nürburgring and a Ford Focus ST (XR5 to us Aussies). Geez, they cram a lot into these episodes. Plato finished the show with John Prescott in a racing Jaguar XK-R. The first three episodes of this series were a bit testing at times, but the last couplf have been much better.