[01x01] September 29th, 2008

[01x01] September 29th, 2008


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I liked the show, plenty of potential once they get more comfortable. Good to see they aren't afraid to ruin a car or 2 in the process :)

I think they tried to pack a little bit too much in though. 1 or 2 less segments and they could have given a bit more depth on the others.

The track was my only real disappointment though. Too short, too narrow, no fast corners, no room to throw cars around and push them to their limit. I wish they could have gone to a proper circuit like Wakefield Park or something.
 
I've come to the decision that it needs polish. The films need clear conclusions.. at the moment it seems like a bunch of guys trying to be like TGUK, where they're missing the entire point of making the car films. We need conclusions! Until this happens, it'll just feel weird. Honestly, I saw the studio with Cox and it was like I'd come home and my whole family had been recast. It was just really, really weird.
 
It is almost as if this show is aimed at a non-Australian audience, just filmed on this great land. The lead guy is damned annoying. SBS i feel you could have done better. I get this feeling they(lead guy in particular) have read a book by an American "How to make Australians like you", "Step 1: Australians love words that Steve Irwin uses so use plenty of themtTey never find them annoying. Make sure they can tell you forcibly used it otherwise they wont notice your trying too hard!". I love our language, but it should be natural, if you don't have it don't force yourself to use it.

If we rank Fat Pizza as the highest a sbs show can get then top gear would have to be a 6.

fat pizza is referred in as size of audience/following(not genre) although TGA probably has lot of the fat pizza audience.

This is just an example of how upset people were / are. I got 4 phonecalls(dad, my brother, a friend, a work friend)(not emails or facebook message actual phone calls) to tell me how bad the show is. I myself will continue watching no matter what happened. I cannot say the same about others.

The track is at an airport and some of the track is just too small. I feel a stadium car park would be better(there are some rather large ones).
 
G'day all. For the fact that it's only the first episode,it wasn't completely all that bad. It needs alot of work and encouragement to be alerted to what could be done better. But for a start. It could have been a hell of alot worse!!! I'm looking forward to next week!
 
You do realise they're referring to the ratings of UK Top Gear in Australia, not in Britain?
Yeah, TG does 8-9 million in the UK per episode.
 
Here's a Blue Sky Scenario to ponder.

Aussies would be familiar with Working Dog, the guys who gave us The Castle, The Dish and more recently Thank God You're Here.

How much fresher and evolutionary would TGA be if Working Dog had been given the franchise?

I think the first EP of TGA simply treads water. No surprises. Safe. Predictable.

:)

And apologies to the OS people who are unfamiliar with Working Dog.
 
I'm not smart enough to edit my previous posts to ad a sig, so I'll just make a new post.

:)
 
It felt forced here and there, and the shouting is a bit annoying. But I think it's got potential. I'll keep DL'ing it and see if they improve over the series. It's not entirely hopeless. :p

Oh, and it seems like the Australians, like their fifthgearian colleagues, don't know how to pronounce "Porsche" correctly either. That's just silly...
 
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As a first episode I think it was pretty good. There were a few moments where the banter between the hosts was natural (Part II of the soft-roader challenge when they were sliding around and with all three in the cars). It didn't work so well in other parts (the Lamborghini section and the News) but this will get better with time.

The accents and language seemed a bit over the top for me. Like the way an Australian sounds on an American TV shows (I haven't heard anyone say "grouse" years). By the end of the episode it wasn't so bad and I could watch without rolling my eyes every few minutes. I've also always hated the SBS ads, but I hate it even more that the presenters mention them and hope this isn't something that will happen every week.

I'll be watching next week :)
 
Oh, and it seems like the Australians, like their fifthgearian colleagues, don't know how to pronounce "Porsche" correctly either. That's just silly...

I noticed that too.

I mean it's not like German is pretty much phonetic in their spelling or anything...
 
I noticed that too.

I mean it's not like German is pretty much phonetic in their spelling or anything...

Yeah, I wouldn't be too annoyed if John Doe would leave out the E, but if you're a petrolhead, especially one who presents a motoring show, you SHOULD know that the E on the end of the name isn't supposed to be let out... :p
 
You would think that with the show being on SBS they would make sure that they didn't screw up the pronunciation of foreign names wouldn't you?
 
Would have been great but for the ugly geek Warren trying too hard. Hope they replace him for the next series!
 
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OK, *very* long time reader, but this is my first post.

I set one benchmark before watching Top Gear Australia: "is it entertaining?"

The answer to that was an unqualified yes.

Sure, there's a bit of work to be done adding some polish. But I enjoyed the show very much and if it continues to build on what they've started with, I'm sure it will be a winner in the end.
 
I'm disappointed it wasn't more...Australian. It was like an alternate reality where Top Gear was hosted by Aussies rather than Brits. I just wish they'd made it their own and actually changed some things rather than play it ultra safe. At points I could swear I was watching the UK version, the sets looked so similar...

Overall, i'm keen to see more, but suspect it'll only get better when they start going their own direction.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't be too annoyed if John Doe would leave out the E, but if you're a petrolhead, especially one who presents a motoring show, you SHOULD know that the E on the end of the name isn't supposed to be let out... :p

So we should be saying "Impret-zah" instead of "Imprezza" and "Citro-unn" instead of the citrus version of "Citroen", "BMW" as "BMVey" and so on? It's part of what makes Strine what it is. I'm happy for it.

My pet irritations with the first episode were the lack of place -- they were on an unnamed sand hill near a rusty ship hull, an unidentified EastLink, somewhere in the NSW snowfields -- and the lack of conclusions. The Maybach piece was rather pointless and open-ended, no soft-roader was held up as the pinnacle with the item being little more than a crude play behind the wheel, and red-lining a cold LP560 while accidentally flipping on the windscreen wipers was cringeworthy. We didn't even get a good lap of the very tight track, dammit. On the plus side, I can see a few celebs clipping a tyre barrier.
It's rough around the edges, but has the nub of something good. If they can actually figure out what to do with stuff other than just jump behind the wheel and have a hoon, it could get interesting. The first episode also lacked anything jaw-droppingly different, which is what I sort of expected.
Pizzati is good, animated and quite funny, Cox is a bit wooden and trying too hard to be a Clarkson clone, and Brown is like a goofy kid and looks way out of his depth. You can tell a lot from how someone has to hunt around for the right bit of switchgear.
 
So we should be saying "Impret-zah" instead of "Imprezza" and "Citro-unn" instead of the citrus version of "Citroen", "BMW" as "BMVey" and so on? It's part of what makes Strine what it is. I'm happy for it.

Well, why not? Saying "Porsch" is about as stupid as saying "Ferrar", "Merced" or "Lamborgh"
 
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