Top Garden Ground Gear Force [March 14th, 2008]

[Tinkerbelle]

THIS!

You've just nailed why I didn't like this, and why I've rated it 3/10. (I gave it some grace as it was for charity. But only just.)

The boys are funny on their own, when left to their own devices (even if they do have sort of an idea of what they're going to say or do). They didn't need all this massive scripting. They've shown they can be entertaining while trying to complete a task successfully (building the Caterham kit car, or even completing the roadworks in 24 hours). Here...while it may've been for charity, and while it may've been intended as a parody of Ground Force, it basically just spit on their ability to be naturally funny by forcing unnecessary shite on them to do, not to mention they didn't make a decent go of it.

THIS! And, of course, the THIS! above...

I was excited to see TGGF, because I'm pretty sure that Hammond has a degree in horticulture and I wanted to see how James' meticulousness and Jeremy's impatience would mesh in a task like this. The combination of all these things, I thought, would make for a fantastic segment.

But none of that was allowed to unfold. It just seemed like a waste of a funny opportunity. It's not that this was scripted-- it's that I could really, really tell it was scripted, and not very well at that. Top Gear is one of the greatest shows I've ever seen, not just because it's funny, but because there's a good dab of humanity there as well.

[shellygrrl]

Actually, Hammond studied photography and painting at college (ostensibly... "All you do at art school is drink and pursue women."). That said, in my head he--along with James--would be the ones who'd have made the biggest attempt to take the task seriously.

[Leprechaun Fart]

I really liked it, personally - sure it was heavily scripted, but because it's them, it was still funny.

They had me from "Hello, and I've just trodden in some.. dog poo."