Top Gear
I'm 29, and I only got my driver's license 4 months ago*, so it's not hard to guess that for most of my life, I haven't been that interested in cars. So it's a bit strange that I've developed such a passion for Top Gear, the BBC series about motor vehicles. I started watching it because it replaced Mythbusters over the summer hiatus, and I've come to appreciate its unashamed glee and occasional absurdity.
Tonight was the first episode of Top Gear Australia.
Some first impressions:
Maybe it's early to tell what the series will be like, but I think I'll be tuning in next week. Maybe in the intervening time I'll work out what these differences have to say about masculinity in Australia and the UK. Stay tuned.
*4 months ago to the day, as it turns out.
** No doubt he's the bastard who created the situation where I can't rent a car until I get off my P plates.
Tonight was the first episode of Top Gear Australia.
Some first impressions:
- One of the first talk sessions commented on the forthcoming increase to Luxury Car Tax in Australia. I was surprised by the petulant way this was discussed, and the attempts to invoke class warfare (of course, it's about the gyprocker buying an HSV, not a merchant banker buying a Porsche - interesting, because the opposition have tried to make it about a farmer buying a 4WD). I also found this very irritating. Surely they don't believe all their viewers are conservative voters!
- At the first ad break, I commented "These guys are trying too hard". No doubt being in the first episode of a series would make you a bit twitchy, and being in a series that's a spinoff of a previously successful series, perhaps even more so. But I guess I'm also accustomed to the wry, British humour that tends to come with Top Gear - and I guess Australian humour isn't quite the same.
- This is borne out by the language - while there is veiled crudity in the UK Top Gear, I don't think I've ever heard them use the word "wanker". At the same time, though - in a repeat that was on last week, UK Top Gear compared various models of Porsche to women with and without breast enhancements - and got real, in-the-flesh, bikini-clad girls on the show to illustrate. It's true that the episode in question was a couple of years old, but I still can't picture that happening in Australia. Well, maybe on "The Footy Show".
- Interestingly, I found the show was more technical than it's UK counterpart - at one point, Charlie Cox (who reminds me absurdly of John Farnham) draws a diagram of a Twin-clutch Gearbox, admittedly, drawn with a stick in the dirt by the side of a road.
- Clarkson, of the UK Top Gear, has commented that speed limits are ridiculous, and has apparently supported people who vandalise speed cameras, and he has been roundly criticised for these views. Still, Vince Colossimo (the guest driver on tonight's episode) confessed without a trace of shame that he had been involved in fourteen separate crashes before he turned 25.** A bit irresponsible, perhaps?
Maybe it's early to tell what the series will be like, but I think I'll be tuning in next week. Maybe in the intervening time I'll work out what these differences have to say about masculinity in Australia and the UK. Stay tuned.
*4 months ago to the day, as it turns out.
** No doubt he's the bastard who created the situation where I can't rent a car until I get off my P plates.