Un-official GTPlanet BBC Topgear UK ThreadTV 

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Famine
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I think it's slightly unfair to suggest that Evans isn't an enthusiast simply because he's only interested in expensive, attention-seeking cars (as you accept yourself, it's not a guarantee). Plenty of folk only like Fast Fords/VWs/JDM stuff, but to me at least, it makes them no less of an enthusiast. I do think, however, it makes him too narrow minded to have any authority as a writer for a general motoring publication - let alone front a motoring show on TV broadcast worldwide and watched by millions.

Maybe driving a heap of different cars on Top Gear will help his enthusiasm to spread elsewhere, but I'm afraid he'll be too busy forcing his views onto the studio audience at an irritatingly high volume to let it all sink in.
 
Nessy
In seriousness though, isn't he just writing guff to please the demographics of that paper?
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Nah, Mail readers hate cars because climate change. Or love them because climate conspiracy the WORLD'S GONE MAD. Maybe they only like the ones not made by immigrants or Germans?

Seriously though, the pieces are terrible. I've not read one yet that wasn't at least 50% an anecdote about his life.
GTP_Ingram
Maybe driving a heap of different cars on Top Gear will help his enthusiasm to spread elsewhere
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Well, if you believe he writes his MOS pieces (fun story: someone I met once thought my boss ghosts them), he already has driven a load of different cars :D
 
They did, I remember watching an unedited version of the news (from series 12 or so) on YouTube and there were only a few chuckles here and there, not the amount you hear in the finished episode.
 
Famine
Not really. We're quite familiar with Chris Evans in the UK, as he's been a huge part of the culture for a couple of decades now - from BBC Radio 1 to the Big Breakfast, to Virgin Radio and TFI Friday, to BBC Radio 2 today, he's been on the screens and airwaves for 25 years.

His performance on the first Top Gear has very little to do with it. Evans 'became' a car enthusiast when he sold Ginger Media for a quarter of a billion pounds and acquired a new and much younger wife (he bought her a Ferrari after their first date; she was 18 and had no driving licence).

He's also been in the papers too. His car reviews in the Mail on Sunday are amongst the worst things committed to print (including Fifty Shades of Grey and The Da Vinci Code)... More on this lower down.... about expensive things, famous people and publicity - which is a common thread of his on-screen and on-air character (and, if reports of his marriage to Billie Pipe are accurate, off-screen and off-air character too) across those 25+ years.

I mean, fair enough. He made tens of millions of quid being a jovial 'anti-establishment' celebrity shill and spent it on James Coburn's Ferrari 250GT California, James Hunt's Hesketh, an example of the most expensive car ever sold at auction - and so on (notice how they're all 'the first' something or 'the most' something), and then painting just about all of them white because he likes it and shoving them into a large display case in his garden. Good on him. It doesn't make him a car enthusiast.

Nor does it disqualify him, admittedly. It may be that he's always been a car enthusiast and the Ferraris he's bought have been the cars he really wants after years of passion for the brand were finally brought within reach due to his success. He's also owned a Morris Minor, a VW Beetle, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and an Abarth 500 (Ferrari edition, of course).


Personally, I think his Ferrari collection (and Carfest) doesn't have anything to do with whether he's a car enthusiast or not. It's his writing about cars that really speaks to it - you just have to read a Chris Evans review to show how little he cares about cars outside of his very narrow interest envelope. Unless it's expensive or fast, it barely counts as a car review, commonly featuring eight columns of an anecdote about someone famous and then one column about the car. In fact the one I read last week was an expensive car - the Rolls Royce Wraith - and the car didn't even get a mention until the second page. He gave it five stars.

For me, Evans is no better than Hammond on this front (though he is on many others - he can act, for a start). Evans is not a man who will spend an hour to pore over a Mazda 2 or a Skoda Yeti - though he might write nice things about them (even if it always gives an impression that he's been incentivised to do so)*. His track record is that for him to be interested in a car, it has to be old and quirky or, old or new, expensive - and to me that's too narrow a scope for the generalised umbrella of car enthusiasm.

Which also disqualifies a lot of people who only like American cars, or only like old cars, or only like BMWs - and so on.


*And I'm not saying you have to write nice things about or even like more mainstream cars in order to qualify as a car enthusiast. I just think that Evans's attitude towards cars is more... Sultan of Brunei than Rowan Atkinson
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Fair enough as I've never read any of his reviews, but I don't know how only caring about Ferraris & other expensive cars has any bearing on him being an enthusiast. If he's out there driving & racing them, he's already doing more than a nice chunk of car enthusiasts.

There isn't some set criteria that you have to like all cars to be passionate about them. I don't care much for cars built before 1970 or pre-WWII & you'll never see me adding one to a collection, but that shouldn't keep me from being passionate about automobiles. :indiff:
 
McLaren
Fair enough as I've never read any of his reviews, but I don't know how only caring about Ferraris & other expensive cars has any bearing on him being an enthusiast. If he's out there driving & racing them, he's already doing more than a nice chunk of car enthusiasts.

There isn't some set criteria that you have to like all cars to be passionate about them. I don't care much for cars built before 1970 or pre-WWII & you'll never see me adding one to a collection, but that shouldn't keep me from being passionate about automobiles. :indiff:
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Would like to thank @Famine for the fact check on Evans. I just think that being on Top Gear you would have to have be at least a car enthusiast, but I actually didn't know that Evans was a car writer (granted that it is for the Mail).
 
So the first episode got just over 6 million views when the iplayer views were added, which is good but no real surprise as the new re-vamped show got a LOT of publicity beforehand, the big test is how many will come back tonight....
 
...Finally watched the Extra Gear. It's good, not as bril as some here have claimed but still watchable. I'm kinda left wondering whether this is an afterthought show packed with rejected content from the main TG. Guess I'll check out the second episode and then make up my mind on it.

Also, while watching EG I felt the audience was really muted. At the time I thought the jokes weren't connecting, but it could be the acoustics of the studio or something. Or just bad writing. Not really surprised laughter is added during editing for the main TG episodes - even WWE adds crowd noise so why shouldn't TG do the same, right?
 
FrzGT
Episode 2 broadcasted already?
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No, it'll be in about 4 hours time.

MUSC4EVER
So the first episode got just over 6 million views when the iplayer views were added, which is good but no real surprise as the new re-vamped show got a LOT of publicity beforehand, the big test is how many will come back tonight....
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Given how many people seemed to be spewing vitriolic promises of never watching Top Gear again on social media prior to the 1st program I'd say it was pretty good!
 
It's not just that he's loud it's the way he narrates in that annoying, oscillating tone as he desperately tries to copy Jeremy. Also there are too many guests on the new TG, you barely have time to hear from each one.
 
Even though I enjoyed last week, I thought tonight was much better. My compatriot Eddie Jordan is a great character and should feature more regularly than he probably will with all the presenters on the show.

One thing I think is crap is the structure of asking guests about their first and best cars and having the audience vote on it. I do however like the Rallycross lap.
 
Something weirdly familiar about Chris Evans introducing Sharleen Spiteri and Seasick Steve.

Mrs Doyle was indeed annoying, but less so than I thought, and I quite liked the way (in Extra gear) he likened driving at speed up the South African great escarpment whilst trying not to spill any of your Sundowner, to F1 teams interpretations of their F1 rule book.

Le Blanc transitioning between real and fake is noticeable, his studio bits with Chris are still one of the weakest points for me, but he's convincing enough behind the wheel.

Damian Lewis was okay.. I prefer the way the SIARCC segment is now to how it was.

EG missed a little bit of an opportunity to feature Sabine and Chris at the N24, but I guess time would have been very constrained.

Overall I liked it.
 
I don't know who Eddie Jordan is, but he might be as uninteresting as Chris Evans is. Also both Jordan and Evans haven't the foggiest idea how to drive on a dirt road. I am a little disappointed Sabine wasn't in the third SUV during the segment too, I feel like she would have been more enjoyable and would actually know what she was doing. Weirdly enough Le Blanc seems to be fairly competent behind the wheel.

I was a little disappointed with Evans driving the McLaren, it was once again him shouting stuff from the crib sheet on the car and not actually giving any real opinion on it. The other guy...uhhh Jenson Button I think...was at least entertaining to watch drive.

I do agree this episode was better than the one last Sunday, but I still think it has a ways to go. It still feels very scripted and is still uninteresting at times, at least the previous incarnation of Top Gear felt scripted and interesting. I'm hoping they continue the upward swing and each episode gets better and Evans learns that shouting just makes him look like a doofus.
 
Well... Chris Evans was his usual atrocious self in the McLaren piece and it wasn't until Jenson Button turned up that it really got going. Button showed more character in the first 5 seconds than Evans had up until that point - and with a celeb to chat to (or rather be petrified by), Evans became a little more bearable.

I think I must have slept through the first part of the SUV group test. I saw something about not spilling giant cocktails - which is very TG if nothing else :D Very odd that they chose the Mercedes GLC, given that it has only a 2.1 diesel or a three litre petrol when the others were three litre diesels... Wonder if they forgot the BMW X3 xDrive30d existed.

SIARCC was a bit of a mess. Too many 'guests' and Evans's commentary of the lap is excruciating (particularly when he calls a shallow left bend a tight right one) - if less excruciating than last week's 'woo'. And why hasn't The Stig - or Evans himself - done a timed lap?

The Eddie Jordan/Matt LeBlanc acting when the car 'broke' was very Hammondy. This at least means it's no worse than CHMTG.

AND SO MUCH SCREAMING.

In general, an improvement over the first one, but still not really watchable* - at best it's kind of like CHMTG at its lowest ebb. Oh, the photography, videography and editing is still top notch.


In EG, Chris Harris's short piece on the Glickenhaus P4/5 was more interesting than the whole of TG.

Chris Evans's slightly longer piece on driving the McLaren F1 at 70mph in a straight line up the runway was not. The tearing up afterwards seemed more awkward than anything, though it did at least appear genuine.

Can't stand Stephen K Amos, so whether that bit was any good or not I don't know.

Rory Reid driving the XC90 T8 was loads more entertaining than any other piece of driving in the two shows.


It really does seem like they've got the wrong two guys doing the add-on show and the wrong guy doing the main show. Drop Evans out for Harris & Reid and it might just rescue it.

*I have to, regardless
 
@Joey D Eddie Jordan is the former founder and owner of the Jordan F1 team (became Force India) who were around in the 90's and 00's. He is always on our screens in the UK for F1 related pieces and commentary.

I can't fathom why the BBC didn't lead with this episode. It was an improvement on the first and the segments were more interesting. Evan's is still irritating... Is he going to say he's bought every car that goes round the track like some smug twit? :lol:

I'm also noticing so far that any offensiveness has been completely removed from the show. No one has been personally attacked verbally and even the cars haven't been criticised in any off the cuff kind of way. It's all very PC and holding hands at the moment.
 
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So, this started out brilliantly for me. Seeing the F1, and then the infamous F1 GTR, my absolute favorite car in my favorite livery for it was a joy because there's almost no professional footage of that car & McLaren at the Goodwood Festival last year was the first time in several, several years that the GTR cars were really brought out to the limelight. However...it was nearly ruined by Evans, but I love the cars enough to overlook him. (Personally, it was the one I truly wished I could see Clarkson in the segment over anyone else). Jensen saved the 675LT, and then the episode kind of mellowed out.

The challenges again, are still feeling fresh and new, imo. But I just lost so much interest in it halfway through because the personalities are just so boring and there's no real tension or sense of competition with each other. Matt still seems to be genuinely enjoying himself, though.

The Stars in a Rally Car is even worse. Just can it or bring in 1 person and ask more than just about the cars they drove. I liked it at first, but is that really how that segment is going to go? What was your first car? What's your current car? Who gets more applause?

I am with @Famine on bringing in Harris & Reid. I actually don't know anything about Reid or his personality, but you guys give him a lot of praise, so he's immediately better than what's been seen so far. This episode was only better because of the Macs for me, otherwise, not really an improvement.
 
So fellow Americans, how did you guys see this today instead of Monday?
 

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