Over the Christmas holidays I found myself killing the odd spare hour or two by watching old episodes of Top Gear on Dave. All very enjoyable and initially put me in the mood for the start of the new series this month. However, my opinion’s changing and the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to think that it might be time to retire Top Gear in its current format completely.
It’s worth stating at the outset that I’ve been a huge Top Gear fan over the years. It’s provided me with countless hours of entertainment on Sunday evenings and as you've probably gathered already, I've been known to regularly watch repeats on Dave. Furthermore, for all the criticism I level at the programme in this article, I’ll still be watching the new series this year. However, Top Gear has in recent series become far too formulaic, predictable, and repetitive which beggars the question, is it still worth having new series of it?
One of the things I’ve always loved about Top Gear is that it’s always looked to be daring with its stunts and has always tried to come up and new and imaginative features. What other programme for instance would look to turn a mini into a space shuttle, drive around Alabama in a car emblazoned with ‘Hillary for President’, or try and create a convertible people carrier. The problem now is that the Top Gear team seem to be running out of ideas and new things to try out. Being daring now seems to involve dropping things from helicopters every other episode, or launching misguided rants against Mexicans. It’s all becoming more than a little repetitive, so much so that Top Gear is becoming as predictable as the plot of your generic Hugh Grant rom-com.
One of the other things that always made the show stand out was the chemistry and banter between the three presenters. Now though, the jokes between seem far more contrived and are repeated time and time again. Most episodes will poke fun at Hammond’s height, May’s slow driving and pedantry, and Clarkson’s love of power tools. It was all pretty funny in the first few series but the same jokes have essentially been used in every episode for the last ten years and are starting to wear thin. All very reminiscent of what happened to Shooting Stars (okay, that’s maybe a little harsh – nothing can be as painful as the last series of Shooting Stars…)
Hardcore fans will maintain that a bad episode of Top Gear is still better than most other things on TV right now and I must admit it’s difficult to argue against this. However, it’s clear that Top Gear’s been declining in quality in recent years and I think there’s something to be said in retiring the current version of the show while it still has credibility. Top Gear USA has shown that the format still works - it’s possible that a new set of presenters might just reinvigorate the UK show and make it feel less dated.
Will the BBC tweak Top Gear? I doubt it. After all, the BBC rakes money in by selling Top Gear rights internationally. Shouldn’t complain too much though – if all else fails, I still have Dave…
No comments:
Post a Comment