Top Gear
The Best TV show you have probably never heard of
We watch a lot of TV shows at www.tvchannelsfree.com and have to keep track of quite a few channels in this age of satellite and on-demand TV programming. There is no doubt that some networks we generally like and some we generally would rather die than having to watch for a day. One of the latter mentioned networks is that silly BBC America. It’s pretty painful. Most of their shows are imported right from the UK and just…well…suck.
However, there is one TV show on BBC that can only be described as “just f***ing awesome” and that TV show is called Top Gear. The show is watched by over a quarter of a billion people every week in dozens of countries. For some reason, it just hasn’t really gotten much traction (no pun intended) here in the US…kind of like soccer I guess.
Top Gear in its current form originally went on the air in 2002 on BBC Two and features 3 hosts:
and the mysterious Racing/Test Driver known as The Stig
The hour long show is comprised by certain signature segments which include:
Races
Long-distance (or, as Clarkson refers to them, “epic”) races typically featuring Clarkson (or one of the other presenters) driving a car against other forms of transport. The challenges usually involve Hammond and May taking the same journey by combinations of plane, train or ferry.
Challenges
Starting in the 4th season, one episode of each series has featured a film built around the premise of “Cheap cars”, where the hosts are given a budget (typically around £1,500, but it has been between £100 and £10,000 depending on the type of car) to buy a used car conforming to certain criteria. Once purchased, the presenters compete against each other in a series of tests to establish who has bought the best car. The presenters have no prior knowledge of what the tests will be, although the tests typically involve long journeys to determine the reliability and fuel economy of the cars, and a race track event to determine performance.
Starting in the 5th season, many of the show’s challenges were introduced with the tag-line, “How hard can it be?”. These included challenges where the presenters attempt to build a convertible Renault Espace, being roadies for The Who, and participating in the Britcar 24-hour endurance race at Silverstone Circuit.
Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car
In each episode, a celebrity is interviewed by Clarkson. Then, Clarkson, the guest and the studio audience watch footage of the guest’s fastest lap around the Top Gear test track. The times are recorded on a leader board. For the first seven seasons of Top Gear, the car driven was a Suzuki Liana.
At the beginning of the 8th season, the Liana was replaced by a Chevrolet Lacetti. Consequently, as the Lacetti is more powerful, the leader board was wiped clean. The format for setting a lap time was also changed: each celebrity is allowed five practice laps, then a final timed lap. No allowance is made for any errors on this final timed lap.
As of July 2008 Jay Kay set the fastest lap time of any celebrity in the Chevrolet Lacetti in the final episode of series 11, knocking Simon Cowell off the top.
There have been several mishaps in the past with this feature. For example, actor Sir Michael Gambon went around the final corner of the track on two wheels, prompting Clarkson to rename the corner in Gambon’s honor.
There is a separate Formula One drivers’ leader board. The Stig is top of this board, but the presenters consider Lewis Hamilton’s time to be more impressive; despite being set on a very wet and oily track, Hamilton’s time was only three tenths of a second slower than The Stig’s, which was set in dry conditions. In the past Clarkson has told drivers that they may deduct three seconds for a wet lap in the Suzuki Liana, making Hamilton’s lap even more impressive. All Formula One times, even those set after the seventh series, are set in the Suzuki Liana.
Power Laps
In the Power Laps segment, The Stig completes a lap around the Top Gear test track to gauge the performance of various cars.
The qualifications for the normal Power Lap Board is that the car being tested must be road-worthy, be able to buy it, and be able to go over a speed bump (sometimes referred to as a ’sleeping policeman’ by the show’s hosts) There is a separate unofficial board of times for non-production cars, such as the Aston Martin DBR9 Le Mans racer for example.
You can catch new episodes of Top Gear every Monday night at 8pm on BBC-America and is widely available to watch online. In case you would like to get a jumpstart, BBC-America happens to be running a Top Gear marathon starting this Sunday at 1pm.
And don’t forget to check back here every day for our little TV blog. Until tomorrow, keep watching and keep coming back to www.tvchannelsfree.com to watch episodes of all your favorite TV shows for free!
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Dog, you know you like it !