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(Written on the 16th July)
Over the past four years, I seemed to grow out of television almost entirely. I had a set in my room in AMH in my first year of university, and even went as far as paying the £100 licence fee for a fuzzy picture and the right to turn it on. (I explained all this to Whitney's father, and he was absolutely horrified.) But I'm getting distracted - what I meant to say is that even though I now spend less time watching television than brushing my teeth, there is one thing that I'm definitely going to miss in America, and that programme (however surprising it may seem, because I'm not really a car type of person) is Top Gear.
The programme is undoubtedly a British classic, and has a history that dates back to the Seventies. At that stage, it was a fairly normal car review show targeted mainly at motoring enthusiasts. Its long run ended in 2001 because of a ratings decline, and most of the presenters restarted the programme as "Fifth Gear" on Channel 5 as no one at that channel has ever been bothered about poor ratings. However, as soon as it was thought that was the end of it, the BBC was handed a design document for a new series. This document probably read something along the lines of "Men who should know better at their age, doing stupid things in expensive cars and occasionally blowing things up." And that's what's so appealing about it.
The show is fronted by Jeremy Clarkson, who is (and let's be fair to him) an arrogant, self-important git. Like all good megalomaniacs, he is supported by two lackeys, James and Richard - or, as they are usually referred to, "those incompetent co-presenters I have".
Cars are still reviewed on the programme, but the focus has now shifted to the team being given various over-ambitious projects, either working together or against each other. Examples from the current series are converting a people-carrier to a convertible, and building amphibious vehicles. Once the vehicles have been built, a series of tests have to be carried out to determine their success - the convertible people carrier had to be driven at 70mph without falling apart, taken through a safari park, and ultimately, driven through an automatic car wash (which, against all logic and likelihood, caught fire).
A challenge that's undertaken quite often is the three of them being given a budget and having to go out and buy a specific class of car as cheap as possible. James' vehicle usually breaks down on these occasions, but he always manages to remain optimistic about it. James is often hailed as an underused comic genius, and he probably does deliver the best lines out of the three of them, including that and his sheepish assessment when his Triumph Herald/yacht broke down - "The trouble is I can't open the bonnet because I've had to seal it up. I didn't tell the others this because I didn't want them to mock me."
Another regular feature is the henchmen being sent on a journey in public transport while Jeremy races them to the same location by road. James and Richard have never won, even when they piloted a private plane from Italy to London (because James had to land in Belgium, as he didn't have the licence to fly at night). The purpose of these races is mainly to prove the uselessness of public transport, though, and they all share my hate of buses, which is very welcome.
It somehow manages to be much more entertaining than anything on UK TV since... oh, I don't know, Black Books, despite not even intentionally being a comedy. The only trouble is that Richard is frequently teased for being so short, but he's exactly the same height as I am :(.
And the reason I felt inspired to write about all this (quite apart from my lack of things to do just now) is because I've just watched the last one that I'll ever see in Britain - even taking into account any more visa disasters. This time, the team went on a caravanning holiday in Dorset, which included ripping a chunk out of the caravan on the way out of a petrol station, being cautioned by police after causing a roadblock while trying to turn it round, and ultimately, once they had arrived at the caravan park, burning it to the ground while trying to cook chips.
So I'm going to miss the rest of this series, but that's what BitTorrent was invented for, isn't it? Well, that and pirating software.
The programme is undoubtedly a British classic, and has a history that dates back to the Seventies. At that stage, it was a fairly normal car review show targeted mainly at motoring enthusiasts. Its long run ended in 2001 because of a ratings decline, and most of the presenters restarted the programme as "Fifth Gear" on Channel 5 as no one at that channel has ever been bothered about poor ratings. However, as soon as it was thought that was the end of it, the BBC was handed a design document for a new series. This document probably read something along the lines of "Men who should know better at their age, doing stupid things in expensive cars and occasionally blowing things up." And that's what's so appealing about it.
The show is fronted by Jeremy Clarkson, who is (and let's be fair to him) an arrogant, self-important git. Like all good megalomaniacs, he is supported by two lackeys, James and Richard - or, as they are usually referred to, "those incompetent co-presenters I have".
Cars are still reviewed on the programme, but the focus has now shifted to the team being given various over-ambitious projects, either working together or against each other. Examples from the current series are converting a people-carrier to a convertible, and building amphibious vehicles. Once the vehicles have been built, a series of tests have to be carried out to determine their success - the convertible people carrier had to be driven at 70mph without falling apart, taken through a safari park, and ultimately, driven through an automatic car wash (which, against all logic and likelihood, caught fire).
A challenge that's undertaken quite often is the three of them being given a budget and having to go out and buy a specific class of car as cheap as possible. James' vehicle usually breaks down on these occasions, but he always manages to remain optimistic about it. James is often hailed as an underused comic genius, and he probably does deliver the best lines out of the three of them, including that and his sheepish assessment when his Triumph Herald/yacht broke down - "The trouble is I can't open the bonnet because I've had to seal it up. I didn't tell the others this because I didn't want them to mock me."
Another regular feature is the henchmen being sent on a journey in public transport while Jeremy races them to the same location by road. James and Richard have never won, even when they piloted a private plane from Italy to London (because James had to land in Belgium, as he didn't have the licence to fly at night). The purpose of these races is mainly to prove the uselessness of public transport, though, and they all share my hate of buses, which is very welcome.
It somehow manages to be much more entertaining than anything on UK TV since... oh, I don't know, Black Books, despite not even intentionally being a comedy. The only trouble is that Richard is frequently teased for being so short, but he's exactly the same height as I am :(.
And the reason I felt inspired to write about all this (quite apart from my lack of things to do just now) is because I've just watched the last one that I'll ever see in Britain - even taking into account any more visa disasters. This time, the team went on a caravanning holiday in Dorset, which included ripping a chunk out of the caravan on the way out of a petrol station, being cautioned by police after causing a roadblock while trying to turn it round, and ultimately, once they had arrived at the caravan park, burning it to the ground while trying to cook chips.
So I'm going to miss the rest of this series, but that's what BitTorrent was invented for, isn't it? Well, that and pirating software.
