The Debut of Top Gear Australia
Posted by: Jarod at 6:49 am, October 2nd, 2008
It was with a lot of cringing that Liz and I watched the (recorded) debut of Top Gear Australia last night. Now we’re pretty big fans of the original, so our main motivation in watching it was to see if the highly acclaimed and very successful template could be shoehorned into another market.
Enter Top Gear Australia. What appears to be a duplicate of the British version, minus Jeremy, Richard, James and million dollar european sports cars…. replaced with Charlie, Steve, Warren and a bunch of local Holden and Fords. Who are Charlie, Steve and Warren? Exactly!
Before the BBC version of Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson had done a smattering of car related DVDs. This earnt him street cred when talking about things with four wheels. To the average viewer of Top Gear Australia (I’ll use myself as an case study) only one of the Australian presenters is known at all, and that was more for his cartoons than his ability behind a steering wheel (or in front of a tv camera).
All the boxes were ticked. There were crazy stunts in the form of a mini moke chucked into a shark feeding frenzy. A three way roadtest/comparison was done. Star in a reasonably priced Proton. The local car news. Single sports car review, which ended in the Australian Stig driving around a random aerodrome on a random track. But due to the lack of charisma brought to the table by the presenters, almost everything they said and did came off as trying too hard.
The fact that it wasn’t a complete trainwreck is promising. The presenters will surely loosen up in the next few episodes and start to work better together. I’ll tune in again for next week’s Holden vs Ford battle, but if it’s the same’ish thing again, it’ll most likely be the last episode I watch for a while.
What I’ve taken away from watching Monday night’s debut is that it proves that you can copy the set, slick graphics, format and even the cinematic style, but at the end of the day it’s the presenters that make the show. And they’ve got a steep uphill climb to win over the Australian audience… and all too little time to do it in.
