Two pence change...
It’s interesting to read your point of view and I’m sorry that you feel the program is ‘dumbed down’.
You misinterpret my point a little.
I don't feel like the program is being dumbed down - it is essentially no different to when they first started doing daft challenges solely for the sake of entertainment. It did get significantly too scripted for a while but I think it's turning around again now.
The TG magazine however
is too dumbed down. It's too far towards being a comic book about cars rather than a magazine now, and the quality of the journalism is far less than it used to be. All the best journos who used to work on it now work for other magazines, strangely enough. Most of them jumped ship around the time the first editor (who had been with the magazine for well over 100 issues), Kevin Blick, retired. The magazine started getting steadily worse after that point.
My objection to Top Gear isn't with the program, it's with a great many of the people who watch it. I'm obviously not referring to most of GTP, as many here are able to take it for what it is - car based entertainment - rather than the sole factual source of everything they know about cars (that said, there are a few on GTP who do seem perilously close to being like that...).
I think with some programs there needs to be a balance between factual, dramatic, educational and entertaining, to mention a few. I think what Clarkson realised when remodelling the Top Gear format was that up until that point all ‘motoring’ programs were nothing more than a journalistic write up of the factory statistics manual with added pictures.
I disagree. Partly, because Clarkson himself already re-modelled the TV car show format when he joined Top Gear originally back in 1988. He brought wit and entertainment into it even back then, albeit less overtly than it is now.
Your use of the word motoring in inverted commas does a massive disservice to most other motoring programs.
Including "old" Top Gear.
Top Gear is the only ‘motoring’ program on the tele in my opinion; all the others to a greater extent are just advertising platforms for the manufacturers.
Disagree even more. Perhaps other motoring programmes are too subtle compared to Top Gear for them to seem like they're anything other than glorified brochures, but this really isn't the case.
Programs like ‘used car road show’(?) offered good advice on buying second hand cars, and Fifth Gear does occasionally rip off Top Gear formats for the sake of entertainment but without really hitting the point.
This bit really gets my goat, actually. It's more or less the attitude you see on youtube comments, albeit correctly spelled, well structured and without overt sexism and/or racism
Seriously though, 5th Gear has at no point "ripped off" Top Gear, no more than it being a television show about cars can be "ripping off" another television show about cars. Yes, they've made a lean towards entertainment features occasionally, but this is just common sense. TG is massively popular and much of that is down to the entertainment format - so, far from ripping them off for the sake of it, does it not make sense to throw in a bit of entertainment?
It depends what you want from a program too. 5th Gear isn't just wall-to-wall arseing about so I find it entertaining in a different way. You could say one is Two And A Half Men and the other is Frasier. Both funny, but with different approaches to the same end result.
Taking this as an opportunity to look at this week’s Top Gear episode, the challenge was as good a look at buying a sporty/classic salon car as any I’ve seen on the tele or read in a magazine. I probably won’t buy one but, because there is no tie to manufacturer’s products, what they presented was a really good look at buying a one of three cars that, 15 years ago were the dogs favourite lickable items. They showed all the pitfalls and things to look out for in finding and buying one of these cars and, effectively carried out a 15 year-on review too. On top of that, they went to locations to show you where to take advantages of motoring laws for the benefit of your motoring pleasure, and demonstrated the practicality of owning one of these cars.
I think you've perhaps read into it a bit too deeply there. It's always been fairly clear that TG don't exactly choose representative examples of the breed when they go out and buy a second hand car - indeed all the ones they bought were at least half the price you'd expect to pay for a decent one, and had all no doubt led very hard lives with little care and attention to warrant some of the problems the ADAC guy found.
If I wanted to buy a 190E Cosworth for example I'd learn a lot more buy watching the
Wheeler Dealers episode, rather than trying to find any useful information in TG... and you're kidding yourself if you think it was more useful than buying a magazine with a buyers' guide in...
The You Tube videos are almost parodies of other car based factual programs but of course, with wry twist of Top Gear humour attached.
If the Youtube vids are a parody of anything, it's the usual trackday vids you find on the net, not "other car based factual programmes" - Clarkson even says as much on the program itself...
), in which case you are wrong. You do not have to have an encyclopaedic mind of car statistics to enjoy them, in fact, to enjoy them for what they are, you are probably better off not having one.
rologue had GT:TV with episodes of TG to download as a feature, I'm hoping that at least Jez and the gang will have more to do with GT5.
