Top Gear Season 14

Hmmm acctually going to the MIMA gallery with them there was a lot more interesting than the TV show tonight... :(

Also another small note to take in is we were there from 7am on the first morning and there were loads of people...LIES!
 
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OK just watched it. Wasn't too bad of an episode. I'm still peeved I didn't get to see them at the gallery though as they weren't there the Sunday. All the crowd filming was done on the day before.

Also no one on the Sunday got given the audio tape.
 
Driving across South America, should be the usual barrel of laughs given how entertaining the previous USA trip one was :p
 
Yeah, that blue was a bit of a horrible colour (I tend to think of it as Peugeot 206 blue). I guess it could work if you painted it up in the Gulf rally livery.
 
Posted by Andy Wilman at 12:40 pm on Sunday December 20, 2009
There are still three shows to transmit, but they’re all shot and cut now – we’re just tidying up the South America special – so it feels like a good time to reflect on the run.

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. I’ve never ever ever seen a production team, from presenters to film crew to editors to production team, work so hard over three months, and I think only this lot could pull off what they do.

However what the viewer sees is what they see, and I notice on the interweb that there is a grumble and a rumble in the air from some of our regulars: we’ve lost the plot, we’ve disappeared up our arses, we’re scripting everything, we’re predictable etc etc, so let’s deal with that.

From what I can work out, the main complaints are that there’s too much cocking about for the car lovers, and that we’re trying too hard on camera. I think, if you consider the tastes of the Final Gear folk and the TG diehards, they’d probably say we’ve only done a couple of memorable films in the last year or so – Bonneville Flats, Commie Cars, Japan Race probably. Well, we do know where you’re coming from, and personally I have massive sympathy and empathy for a guy like that Monk chap, who clearly cares, and judging by the way he fills up the worldwide web, is clearly frustrated by what we do on a show he used to love.

However, although we understand the complaints, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to do anything about them. Believe me that’s not arrogance on our part, but the fact is we’re not wedding DJs taking requests, and for good reason, because no good telly in the history of man was ever created that way. You have to make the programme you want to make, and people then vote with the on or off button. So although not many on Final Gear liked the electric car, we actually loved it, and we’ll make more of those any time we get the right idea.

However when we do agree with where the viewers are coming from, then we could be in business. Personally, for example, 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. I like those characters, but I too would like to see more of them as they were in Bonneville, or in Botswana or in the US Special. I miss the three mates who mooch along – there were flashes of it in the Lancia film, and it’s there in the South American Special, and yes, it’s nice to have it back. I know James definitely feels that way, and Jeremy and I were saying the other morning how the Lancia film was a bit of a wake up reminder that we can actually make good films just enthusing about cars.

I’d like to offer my thoughts on a few other points. Firstly, this notion that everything’s scripted. It isn’t. We went to South America with one sheet of A4, Romania with 2 or 3 sheets about the car particulars, Ice Racing the same. Yes we do set a few things up – You won’t find Careless Air in the phone book, and obviously we rang Norwich Airport before James’s caravan airship pitched up, but no, for the millionth time, we don’t pre-arrange races or challenges or petrol stations in Alabama.

I think what you’re seeing with the scripted issue is partly down to the point above about playing to our cartoon characters, partly just old fashioned familiarity, but there’s also a more important issue, and that’s that you’re watching a show that’s lost its innocence. To explain, let’s go back a bit. When we started in 2002, our goal was to make a decent Top Gear, but then, and most important, organically, things took us by surprise. Nobody knew the onscreen chemistry of the trio would be so good, also, none of us saw coming where we could actually go with the films.

Rewatch the Cheap Porsches or the **** Italian Supercars film, and you’ll see what I mean. That was the first time a car show was making tv out of the cars going wrong, and you can see the surprise and delight on the presenters’ faces as it’s dawning on them, right there in the shoot, how much fun there is to be had out of crap car calamity. You, we, shared the innocence. And so it went on. The America Special wasn’t even meant to be an hour long Special – we went there to make 25 minutes, and **** happened around us – the petrol station etc etc – and again, the surprise in our own faces is visible.

That innocence has gone now, as always happens, because that’s the nature of TV. You all know the main pillars of our editorial, and we do our best to entertain, but none of us are going back to that first flush of discovery.

But although that’s sad, this is not time for glumness because there’s still so much to do. Firstly, please relax if we try this or that and it doesn’t work, because it just means we’re not getting complacent. I can pretty much write that Monk chap’s review of tonight’s show, and boy will he hate Art Gallery, but 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.

The flip side of this is that we’re actually the most disciplined of any formatted TV show when it comes to not relying on our old bankers. It would, for example, be the easiest thing in the world to do a big race every other week – I love a race, I can hardly sleep the night before we shoot one – but we’ve done only a couple in the last two years, and that’s because we won’t attempt one until we can find a good one.

Jeremy has now shot two of those preposterous tests – Fiesta and Twingo, but likewise he’d be happy to call a halt at two if there wasn’t another one to be done. 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. But ironically, that does mean trying new things to the last, even if they screw up, because, well, it means you never stopped trying.

That’s the way it is with content, but as I say, the messages that resonate for me on these web posts are the ones that say: “Can we have our three old mates back?” Well, we will still continue to build electric cars and airships, because we like doing it, but trust me, there’ll be a race the second we find one, and most important we still know how to do a Bonneville, the whole three blokes with cars mooching along, and if you don’t believe me just watch the South America special. And thank you for caring so much.
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http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2009/12/20/series-14-where-were-at/
 
That's an excellent piece there, very interesting and 'from the heart'.
I really enjoyed last nights episode too - the Art Gallery was genuinely entertaining, and the Nobel test was most enjoyable. It's also great to see Button looking happy and relaxed - he makes a very good guest.
 
I liked last nights episode overall. There were some great moments. Let me just be the first to say I'm a BIG FAN of topgear. I'm only airing these views as I want the best from the show...
Some bits last night were just too predictable and scripted still. I mean the bit when Hammond was painting a picture by the river and it fell in. I said to my g/f at the time "that's going in the river within 5 minutes" and hey ho....cheese fest of predictability and so not funny. We need less of the trying too hard to be funny. I can think of LOADS of SIMPLE things that would be amazing. I mean the bit with the Noble (spelling?) supercar. It was great...but could have been better. When he was driving past all of those other supercars claiming it to be faster. Can we not have seen evidence of that with a little drag race? A little race round a track? Instead it did a lap of top gear track which was fine and really entertaining...but...well...could just have been better.

They could organize things with SEVERAL f1 drivers? Mini race...karting thing. What about a simple Top gear race? The top gear staff do lap times round the track to see how good Jezzer is etc. More simple road reviews of cars rather than track based power slides. i.e. How does the new <insert nice RWD monster here> perform on the road.

I agree that they have pushed the boundaries already and had that kind of "virgin" first time epic shoot in various situations int he past. It is becoming hard to live up to this so I guess they try new things. But to me, it could do with more effort. Something new again...something amazing.
 
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[TW]Fox;15570087 said:
95% of the people watching it love it.

The remaining 5% complain on the internet.
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Everyone I speak to about the show seems to think that this series is missing some spark.

I'm a huge fan of Top Gear and still look forward to it every week but first episode aside I've been disappointed this time round.

Its no big deal though, they have had a fantastic run and it is starting to go stale. I think it is quite telling in the quote above where they say
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.
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quite obviously they have the end in sight and things will start to wrap up a bit.

Personally I'd love to see one last big bang of a series, even if we had to wait a year or more for it, followed up by a "best of Top Gear" run of the classic episodes then let it finish on a high.
 
I'm actually looking forward to the last in the series - not for any of the cars, but for the SIARPC section. Seasick Steve. :D A man whose ambition with vehicles was to own a John Deere tractor.
 
[TW]Fox;15570087 said:
95% of the people watching it love it.

The remaining 5% complain on the internet.
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You also need to consider the % of people that complain, but still watch it.

We can see that much on here "watched last nights show and it was ****"

next week ...

"watched again last night and its still ****"

For as long as the TV execs etc.. measure the sucess of a TV show by audience numbers, and people keep tuning in. They wont change a thing, as you obviously still enjoy it enough to watch it, and they get to make the programme they want to.
 
lordrobs said:
Everyone I speak to about the show seems to think that this series is missing some spark.
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same.

its at one of its lowest points atm and slowly but surely, they're getting the message.

theres always a few that'll claim they enjoyed it just to 'be different', this will never change.

blah blah we can't find a decent race etc etc, meh, sounds like they need to bring in some new talent who can.

i will keep tuning in every week, because every now and then, they hit the nail on the head and produce a fine hours worth of film. besides, theres no other car show out there worth watching as an alternative, fortunately for them.
 
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