Top Gear Australia: A First Look
The obvious first thing to say is that the producers were unable to bring themselves to move away from the winning formula: the opening titles, the staging, the set, and the photography are not just reminiscent of the British version, they are exactly the same. Same camera angles, same segments, same jokes. Even the same Stig! The car-porn photography in the review segments owes very much to the original, although it has been suggested that the editing is pacier.
But it is the choice of presenter that is most revealing. It is easy to map the three stars onto Clarkson, Hammond, and May: the lead presenter is older and opinionated; the little guy is excitable; and the boring one has a terrible sense of direction and drives slowly. They even dress the same.
All this leads me to suspect that the producers don’t understand why the original show works. It’s not the cars, or the photography. It’s not even the silly challenges: it’s the interactions between the presenters. As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes the show gets it wrong, but overall it makes for highly enjoyable television, and I’m not even remotely interested in cars.
In time the three Australians might develop the same sort of presence as their British counterparts, but it’s a tough ask, and the early signs aren’t promising.
Your Comments
Kirsty writes:
How much of the look of the show would you attribute to the conditions of the franchise though? Here I’m thinking of Australian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance which replicate pretty much about everything of their British and US originals, right down to the casting of the regular talent.
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 09:59 | Permanent link to this comment
Wendy writes:
In terms of the early signs not being promising, it was interesting over the last while to see SBS running repeats of the British original from the time James May joined the program as a regular host. It clearly took some time for the repartee between Clarkson, Hammond andMay to fully develop, as in the early stages, May seemed rather sidelined as a “support act” to the other two. Whether or not the Australian version is given the time and space to have a chance of finding its feet will be interesting to see. I imagine SBS doesn’t have quite the cutthroat approach to commercial failures as we have seen exhibited on commercial broadcasters over the last few years, but time will tell. How did Monday’s show rate I wonder?
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 13:37 | Permanent link to this comment
John writes:
I’m probably the wrong person to be answering this, for despite my fondness for the British show, I really don’t know a lot about the genre of car shows. But my understanding is that while Top Gear might have extended their celebrity, all three presenters have public identities outside the show, as motoring journalists, or (in Hammond’s case) daytime television. While the characters on the show are undoubtedly constructions, they are characters that have developed over time and in contexts other than Top Gear. The three local boys, on the other hand, don’t have any pre-existing public identity (that I am aware of) and are trying to inhabit the character roles already defined by Clarkson, et al. Like when an actor leaves a soap and the producers just replace them without writing the character out of the script, hoping nobody notices. Yes, they might develop a rapport, but it will be hard work given the narrow scope they have been given.
Which, to respond to Kirsty’s question, is what irritated me the most: the rhetoric that justified the show was that the Australian situation was so different, that we needed to make our own version of the show—about Aussie cars, and Aussie blokes, and Aussie conditions. The slavish following of the superficial ascepts of the show (set, music, format, etc.) completely subverts this rhetoric. I believe the show is set up differently to an Idol franchise, where the similarities across countries are comforting. Here they just come across as forced and disingenuous. The show was always going to be judged against the British version: the producers have given themselves a much harder job in dealing with this (probably unfair) comparison.
Finally, according to Crikey, the episode averaged 933,000 viewers, which actually isn’t too bad! The real test will probably be next week’s ep.
Posted: 1 10 2008 - 14:31 | Permanent link to this comment
Kirsty writes:
Warren, who I think in your terms is ‘the boring one’, had a gig on Q & A, I think, where he drew comics on the spot, interpreting the discussion going on.
Anyway, I know I’ve seen him on some show in that capacity.
I take your point about the copying of the show, but I still wonder whether it’s ‘slavishness’; I suspect it’s more contractual. We’ll have to quiz FB on her knowledge of it all.
Posted: 3 10 2008 - 09:49 | Permanent link to this comment