The thing is with the Jezza-on-the-cliff bit:
Staged it may have been, but as others pointed out, it no doubt happened several times during the trip. And no matter how protected Jezza might actually have been, whether he had some harness, or the car was tethered, or whatever theory you might come up with, as far as I'm concerned you can't see the join, and Clarkson is in genuine peril there.
Much of Top Gear reminds of Derren Brown's russian roulette stunt being done haphazardly - the cliff scene was an example of it being done expertly. When Derren Brown did the gun thing, people were talking about how it wasn't a bullet but a blank, he might have known for definite which chamber it was in, maybe there wasn't a bullet anyway, all this sort of stuff - we're in the same ballpark as Clarkson and co's caravan fire taking place somewhere other than advertised, under controlled circumstances. But no matter what Brown was 'lying' about, ultimately he created a solid illusion of a man potentially about to kill himself, and that's what we had with Jezza's cliff bit. In both cases, enormous tension was created, and fantastic television was the result. You can go back and point out where production cars are the same, but whatever - there's a point at which you have to just accept that Jezza is on the very edge of a cliff in a car which could slip down it at any minute, and that's something that's truly been caught on camera. The result is profound.
However, you get into murky waters with Top Gear, waters that Brown didn't have to contend with. Derren Brown is an illusionist - the job title tells you that you're going to be lied to, and you sign the viewer-programme contract in that understanding. Top Gear is a programme that purports to present real life events in a fundamentally documentary form, and so being lied to - even if it's in the same way as Derren Brown does - takes on a far greater significance. Things like pickups of cars driving past the camera, you don't even think about, but they are technically misleading - you're not watching Jezza drive that Bugatti across France, it's some other bloke who you just can't see, so you believe it's Jezza. That stuff's always been acceptable because it doesn't create events from nothing - the car drove fast, you know that. When it comes to the caravan fire, you're seeing something not only created deliberately but done so with the intention of being passed off to the viewer as spontaneous and unplanned, and in a programme that, by its format, tells you it's showing genuinely spontaneous events, it has a catastrophic effect on the viewer-programme contract.
I'll continue to watch and re-watch those dubious things, but my favourite parts of Top Gear will always be segments like the early cheap car challenges, such as the one with the Volvo, Rover and Audi. In those days the things that were set up (unless I've missed something that ruins my argument!), you were told we set up: i.e. the challenges. We were told they'd have to drive into brick walls, so we felt on the same side as the presenters and programme-makers, with the same information - essentially, we were collectively going, "I wonder what'll happen next". (
I also felt the same way about the drive-time show episode - I much prefer listening to the show as it was broadcast, as can be found on FinalGear no doubt, than I do the edited version on Top Gear, because it has that element of rawness, that this really was live and anything could have happened.) Later episodes have been diluted with things that are more suspicious and thus damaging to our trust in and enjoyment of the programme, such as the car wash carnage - we're constantly asking, was it really an accident or a set-up? That's a question I didn't ask when Jezza was on the cliff edge, so gripped was I by the action and so clear was it that, no matter what behind-the-scenes chicanery there might have been, Jezza was on the edge of that cliff in that enormous vehicle.
What's my point? I don't know. Most of me really hates the clear involvement of production staff in the preparation and staging of events that are presented as spontaneous; the part of me that studies TV form academically understands that in TV-land, this is just the way it's done sometimes. I find it very hard to reconcile that - Top Gear's far from the only culprit but as a programme I love, it's the one I have the most trouble with intellectually.
And Mr Wilman, you can quote me on that.
