Clarkson Suspended by BBC - Page 14

csv8 · 03-01-2016, 04:14 PM

Philip Glennister would be a good host...He does a great job in For The Love of Cars GEM Monday 7.30pm.

mitelsx2000 · 03-01-2016, 04:15 PM

Get the Top gear crew on TV ASAP. The replacement show is going to be a joke

b0son · 07-01-2016, 10:49 AM

LOL... it gets better... Chris Evans can't talk and drive at the same time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rive-time.html

mitelsx2000 · 07-01-2016, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by b0son

LOL... it gets better... Chris Evans can't talk and drive at the same time.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...rive-time.html

It may be the last nail in the coffin!!!!

**Beastie** · 07-01-2016, 04:22 PM

RIP Top Gear....

Xauterus · 07-01-2016, 06:04 PM

Top Gear had their day. Please let the show rest in peace bbc.

**Uncle_Ken** · 07-01-2016, 06:22 PM

He looks familiar

UK

SYZ · 11-01-2016, 07:56 AM

Clarkson is a certifiable dìckhead, but a knowledgeable and humorous one all the same.

Boosted8 · 11-01-2016, 08:12 AM

The show was starting to show it's age long before Clarkson was sacked. They had milked the formula to death.

Let it go and subscribe to Motor Trend on youtube instead.

XRtowcar · 11-01-2016, 10:00 AM

What will be the new name for Clarkson's tame racing driver. The Stog?

HO 3 · 11-01-2016, 10:35 AM

Some say it will be...............The Mig.

Cheers Mick

Express · 30-05-2016, 04:54 PM

Quote:

New Top Gear branded a 'diabolical disaster' as fans turn on host Chris Evans

30 May, 2016

Ebony Bowden
Entertainment Reporter

They always had big boots to fill, but it looks like the new hosts of Top Gear missed the mark - spectacularly.

The relaunched BBC series with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc at the helm premiered on Sunday night to disastrous reviews on social media.

Host Chris Evans' presenting style, which apparently included a lot of shouting, left some fans cold. Photo: BBC

The reaction from fans was so bad that UK betting house Ladbrokes started a wager on this being the last season of Top Gear to air on the BBC.

Angry fans were unimpressed by the chemistry between Evans and LeBlanc, which some said was non-existent, as well as Evans' shouting in an apparent attempt to replicate predecessor Jeremy Clarkson.

"Anyone who just watched the new Top Gear and thought it was good needs a brain transplant. Absolutely diabolical," tweeted one fan.

Hosts Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc lacked chemisty and looked like they were on 'a bad Tinder date,' according to some critics. Photo: BBC

"James May has a show where he puts old lawn mowers together, piece by piece. In a shed. It's better than this."

"Evans and LeBlanc forced chemistry," wrote another. "Sat on top of an old jeep smiling at each other like a bad Tinder date."

Friends actor Matt LeBlanc was a wildcard heading into the series but it appears the American export shone in the pressurised environment.

Another criticism of the new Top Gear is that the England vs United States theme grated on fans. Photo: BBC

The Guardian's Sam Wollaston praised LeBlanc for being 'cheeky, quite funny and relaxed' but criticised Evans' performance as being forced.

"Chris Evans is trying to be Jeremy Clarkson, and that's probably not a good idea. There's also an uncharacteristic nervousness about him; possibly because of that anticipation, the build-up, the weight on his shoulders, possibly because this kind of scripted stunt isn't suited to him – he's a chatterbox, not an actor."

So far the new Top Gear appears to be a rehash of old stunts with fresh faces, with the new hosts driving around London in three-wheeler Reliant Robins.

Meanwhile, Top Gear's old hosts are gearing up for their new Amazon show.

"This is basically a rehash of the old one all at once," a disgruntled fan tweeted.

The UK Telegraph also accused producers of overplaying the United Kingdom versus the United States angle between LeBlanc and Evans, forcing them to drive around in cars brandished in their nations' respective flags.

"Forcing Matt LeBlanc to experience British Summertime - standing on a freezing, rainy beach in a cagoule - while he and Evans test a British car against an American car was yet another example of the cliche they're ramming down our throats," wrote Helena Horton.

"It's fun for one episode - but will this be the theme of the whole series? It could get tired."

Some punters were quick to remind unimpressed fans that the original Top Gear "took years until it gelled". "It's going to take a few months to bed in, but it's jolly," tweeted a BBC presenter.

However, without Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond and executive producer Andy Wilman, Top Gear always appeared destined to struggle.

After BBC sacked Clarkson in March 2015 for assaulting a producer, co-stars May and Hammond refused to continue the show without their friend, walking away from the network along with Wilman.

The four men have since migrated to Amazon where their new weekly show The Grand Tour will air this spring.

They have remained silent following the Top Gear relaunch, although many fans have presumptuously guessed their reactions.

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...30-gp6tzj.html

FG50T · 30-05-2016, 05:41 PM

All this waiting and they drive Reliant Robins around London in the first fecking episode!?

HO 3 · 30-05-2016, 06:22 PM

The Grand Tour...............kind of has a ring to it.

Cheers Mick

arronm · 30-05-2016, 08:37 PM

It also has TG Tour

Ben73 · 31-05-2016, 01:41 AM

TGT
Top Gear Two.

Seen a few people on Facebook talking about the new Top Gear. No one seams to like Chris Evans as the host.

Sioso · 31-05-2016, 08:26 AM

Good to see no one started a new thread for the New Top Gear - it doesn't deserve one.
I watched a bit of it last night and had to turn it off - it was painful to watch.
I figured it was a show about cars so I'll watch it regardless but I just couldn't do it.
How Chris Evans is so popular baffles me.
I then tried watching Extra Gear afterwards as I like Chris Harris's youtube clips but I couldn't watch that either.
If they revamped the whole show it might have better but trying to copy the old format with lame jokes was a complete disaster.
I actually felt sorry for the people in the studio, I would have been embarrassed to be in the crowd.
I give it 0.5 out of 10.

**Grunter** · 31-05-2016, 10:36 AM

I was pretty ordinary. I'm still amazed by the camera work and production, but it really was painful to watch the new hosts.

With you Sioso, they should have changed the format, instead it came across as a poor parody of the old show.

Lukeyson · 31-05-2016, 07:15 PM

Chris just yells everything, I DVR'd it on Fox, skimmed through most of the segments and didn't even make the end it was so painful. All Top Gear fans knew it was an abortion that should of happened.

Bring on The Grand Tour!

csv8 · 31-05-2016, 07:33 PM

Where the new TG went wrong.
http://www.news.com.au/entertainment...41679ddbf96577

FGX008 · 31-05-2016, 08:01 PM

I could only stomach the first 10 minutes before I had to change channels. The opening segment with Evans and Sabine driving around a military airfield in the US in a Dodge Viper and Corvette Z06 respectively trying to score a Top Gun style kill was really boring TV. IMV if the overall format doesn't improve this show will fail TV ratings wise!

Cheers, Brent

Express · 01-06-2016, 03:22 PM

The BBC going into damage control by having Chris Evans try and explain the new direction Top Gear will take to distance it from the Clarkson/Hammond/May version.

Quote:

Top Gear host Chris Evans' plan to rebuild show and why Jeremy Clarkson had to go

1 June, 2016

Michael Idato
Entertainment Editor-at-Large, Los Angeles

Despite the BBC's obvious efforts to revitalise the Top Gear franchise in the wake of its hosts' departure, there is one ingredient Twitter fans aren't going for - see link at the bottom

New Top Gear branded a 'diabolical disaster' as fans turn on host Chris Evans - see link at the bottom

Top Gear host Chris Evans defends debut - see link at the bottom

When the long-running motoring series Top Gear nosedived into controversy, it did so with almost peerless spectacle.

After a succession of scandals, the show's host Jeremy Clarkson was finally suspended in March 2015 and later sacked. His co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond said they would not return without him, and the show's executive producer Andy Wilman resigned.

The rebooted Top Gear cast features new hosts Matt LeBlanc (left) and Chris Evans and brings back professional driver Stig.

As self-immolation goes, even television, where such scandals are more commonplace than you might expect, would struggle to find one so entire. For the BBC, which owns the globally successful motoring brand, there had to be a way forward.

The broadcaster named Chris Evans as the show's new lead host in June 2015 and later that his co-host would be the American actor Matt LeBlanc. There would also be four other recurring co-hosts, former motorsport boss Eddie Jordan, motoring journalist Chris Harris, race car driver Sabine Schmitz and motoring journalist Rory Reid.

Striding into a hotel room in Cannes, France, where he has come to sell the rebooted Top Gear to the hundreds of broadcasters around the world who own the rights to it, the show's new host, Chris Evans, declares he is a fan of the show's former host, Jeremy Clarkson. And an even bigger fan of Top Gear itself.

But the 50-year-old radio star concedes that, in the wake of the succession of scandals that had plagued Clarkson and the show, something had to give.

"I loved Top Gear the way it was, I was a really huge fan," he says. "Family, me, we loved it. Favourite show. Then this crazy thing happened, [and] inevitably Jeremy had to go, one way or another, and then there was this impasse at the BBC of what was going to happen next. We were all as gripped as everybody else.

"We all thought James [May] and Richard [Hammond] would carry on, and that's what I wanted to happen as a fan," Evans adds. "I just wanted our show to carry on. The bizarre thing was when I watched the last show, or what became the last show, which none of us knew, nor did they when they were making it, it was so sad. It was like a patient that didn't know it was dying or hadn't been told."

That episode aired in June 2015. Some time later Evans got a call from the then director of television at the BBC, Mark Linsey, asking him if he was open to a conversation about Top Gear.

"I had really genuinely ruled myself out because everybody else was putting their hats in the ring and getting busy," he says. "That was distasteful in my opinion, and disrespectful of how hard [everyone had worked on] the program in the first place."

When the BBC confirmed to Evans the series, as everyone knew it, had been cancelled, he "was absolutely completely up for making it".

"I was in shock for about two or three weeks afterwards, and I was just trying to come to terms with what I had said yes to and what that meant in my life and my career and what people would think of me."

The focus then became exploring the show's philosophy, with a view to rebuilding it. "What it was, how it came about, why I liked it, why it was any good, where it was at the moment, what did that mean, what could we take with us, what couldn't we take with us ... and then putting together a production team," Evans says.

"All the press wanted to know about was, who's going to be the next James, who's going to be the next Richard, are you Jeremy? We pretty much got a comprehensive team within I would say six weeks. Signed everybody up, took them out to the pub, got to know each other, which is fun."

Evans sees the new series as a chance to wipe the slate clean, not just about Clarkson and the scandals that plagued him, but about the structure of the show's format. " I do see it as a blank canvas and as a very exciting prospect," he says. "I have no issues with any lingering anything, I honestly couldn't be more excited."

The recipe of Top Gear has always been something of a case of 11 secret herbs and spices, an uncertain blend of passion, qualification, derring do, madness and joy. Evans says, first and foremost, he is a fan of cars. "I have been since I can remember thinking a thought," he says. "And I love to make television programs. Those are the first two things."

Requirements of the gig? "You need to love motorcars and you need to want to make great television programs for the sake of making them," he says. "It's [also] really useful if you don't have to do the job, [that] it's not a stepping stone in your career, and it's not a stepping stone in my career.

"I'm doing this show because I really really want to," he adds. "It puts me in a very healthy situation, doesn't it? It doesn't compromise me. It means I can make my own decisions. It means if I succeed, it'll be because of the decisions I've made, and if I fail, it's because of the decisions I've made. Not because of decisions that were forced upon me."

The Clarkson-May-Hammond iteration of the series, Evans says, was "in many ways a lot of little films", using the studio-based banter to frame segments that were like classic caper movies, such as the show's memorable London-to-Verbier race. (That episode won the series its International Emmy Award.)

"It's a lot to do with screenplay," Evans says. "The new Top Gear, the last 12 years, is very screenplay-based as opposed to script based. Although Jeremy was a brilliant wordsmith, it's about those moving pictures."

Evans attempted to deconstruct the series – "I sat down and I thought about why I like it, why my kids like it, why my wife likes it, and why the world likes it," he says – and he came up with three key words: movement, jeopardy and judgement.

"I know movement sounds ironic because it's a car show, but so seldom is it just people talking," he says. "It's nearly always moving and maybe there should always be movement involved. And when you add jeopardy, you have conflict and resolution, and when you have conflict and resolution, from a viewer's point of view, you get judgement. When people are watching they love to judge.

"The reason a lot of kids love the show is they watch it with their mates or their brothers and they always want to be right. And if you go to any playground, there's kids going, 'well, you think this but I think that, and I'm right'. Top Gear is that from the beginning."

Plus, he adds, if you watch The Great Escape or The Italian Job, "it's basically those films. So if we sort of stick with that and throw a few other twists and go for revolution, I think we should be OK."

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/...31-gp7ssw.html

Batmobile · 04-06-2016, 08:18 PM

Straight up I am and will always be a fan of the Clarkson Group in particular loved what May brought to the show.
Since their departure and not been bothered to catch the show , given the mess the Australian made of their copy , but having sat through the UK show with Chris Evans , I thought "not bad"
I will try a few more episodes

roddy1960 · 05-06-2016, 08:32 AM

G'day , I liked the original Top Gear..It was fun , had cringe moments (good and bad) and Richard Hammond was my favourite of the three presenters..Not interested at all in the new show...One show that is better , has the fun factor in bucketloads and also British is Fifth Gear...The four presenters headed by Tiff Needham works for me. I wonder will another network try to get Clarkson-May and Hammond back together at some stage...and pay BBC megabucks for the rights..On the knock-offs..If people think the Aussie version was terrible , how bad was the embarrassing U.S. one..The U.S.A does NOT do knock-offs well in anything , not least in television.. Cheers Rod..

**Giant Cranium** · 05-06-2016, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roddy1960

G'day , I liked the original Top Gear..It was fun , had cringe moments (good and bad) and Richard Hammond was my favourite of the three presenters..Not interested at all in the new show...One show that is better , has the fun factor in bucketloads and also British is Fifth Gear...The four presenters headed by Tiff Needham works for me. I wonder will another network try to get Clarkson-May and Hammond back together at some stage...and pay BBC megabucks for the rights..On the knock-offs..If people think the Aussie version was terrible , how bad was the embarrassing U.S. one..The U.S.A does NOT do knock-offs well in anything , not least in television.. Cheers Rod..

They are back together on a new show for Amazon. You been living under a rock? And the bbc will never give up the rights. Imagine how much they make on the reruns

Craig@AUDI · 05-06-2016, 10:40 AM

Chris Evans is beyond irritating...pass.

Dave_Obsession · 05-06-2016, 10:59 AM

I didn't mind the new Top Gear, of course it was different to the Clarkson-era, but it seems that some people expect it to be exactly the same and then complain when it becomes clear it's going to be different.
Those same people would presumably also complain that it was virtually 'plagiarism' if they tried to do everything as it was - talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't!

For the record I didn't mind the Aussie Top Gear either, and the US one is also quite watchable (thought for me ranks below the UK and Aussie versions).

Yes Chris Evans shouted way too much, but it wasn't a deal-breaker. Maybe he'll turn the volume down as the series goes on. The edited/inserted laughter at a production level isn't a great look but again, not a deal-breaker - I don't watch the show to gauge the crowd's reactions.

People claiming the chemistry between Evans and LeBlanc wasn't there - I disagree; they've definitely got something growing but Rome wasn't built in a day - look at the first few seasons of Clarkson Top Gear and you'll see it was all a bit 'wooden' as well.

Evans' review of the ACR Viper was solid.
The USA vs UK segment/challenge was a bit silly and pointless (no backstory) but they have to start somewhere and it was a relatively safe/obvious starting point with a more 'international' cast. Perhaps they might do a German/Rest of the World twist in future challenges.
If they get Chris Harris doing more stuff on the main show that would be brilliant.
I thought out of the lot of them, Rory Reid (Extra Gear) looked like a deer in headlights, didn't look relaxed at all. But you can see the potential and I think he'll be brilliant once he settles in to the role some more.

I think people shouldn't judge the show at all until the end of the current season - then we'll have seen all the hosts enough in different segments to see how the format is progressing and developing. If the car content is solid enough that is the most important thing for most people, and it gives the presenters more of a platform to work from.

I think it can still be a very good show in its own right - the 'banter' is never going to be the same as Clarkson et al; and rightfully so - how quickly people seem to forget the Clarkson-era Top Gear was being accused of going stale quite a lot, and it may very well not have lasted much longer anyway.

b0son · 05-06-2016, 11:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave_Obsession

Evans' review of the ACR Viper was solid.

Like when he said a car with more downforce was going to be a handful to drive???

roddy1960 · 05-06-2016, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Giant Cranium

They are back together on a new show for Amazon. You been living under a rock? And the bbc will never give up the rights. Imagine how much they make on the reruns

..My rock doesn't get every TV channel and every service.....and I'm not a massive fan of Top Gear but I do know a little bit about it Clarksons suspension...Give me Fifth Gear any day..AND you are just plain rude and insulting...Oh yes I better go and clean my rock..Cheers Rod...

**Giant Cranium** · 05-06-2016, 02:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roddy1960

..My rock doesn't get every TV channel and every service.....and I'm not a massive fan of Top Gear but I do know a little bit about it Clarksons suspension...Give me Fifth Gear any day..AND you are just plain rude and insulting...Oh yes I better go and clean my rock..Cheers Rod...

Wow. Sensitive. It's called banter. I do agree with fifth gear. It's a lot more informative for a gear head instead of all sideways cinematic action. Nice to have options.

Is the rock clean yet? (more banter)