Last season I was pretty ambivalent to whether or not I actually liked any of the presenters. I never did get the whole Charlie Hate thing that a lot of Australians on the forum had going. This season though... it's sort of obvious, now, just how bad Charlie was.
I went into this a bit on the episode 2 thread. Last season TG-Aus pretty much tried to be exactly like TG-UK in every aspect, down to replicating the news segments. However, with only maybe 40-45 minutes of actual show time, versus TG-UK's full hour, the exact same format really didn't work. The Lord of the Studio bit that Jeremy's able to pull off, just really doesn't work quite as well in a smaller time-slot... something US viewers kept complaining about every-time TG-UK got ported over to the US market.
Now though, TG-Aus seems to have worked out it's own pacing and format. James, at least in the first two episodes, seems to be just another one of the guys. Which, to me, works out really well. When I went back and watched Season One again, my favorite parts generally wound up being segments with Warren and Steve... e.g. the Smart Car into a Hearse... and the fight against a Helicopter. My least favorite parts wound up being anything with Charlie. E.g., Holden Versus Ford. Charlie's a good driver, but he was just so dry and emotionless versus Hyper Steve. Charlie never did really seem like he was in league... you know, in cahoots, with Steven and Warren. He always seemed like he was sorta... an outside observer. I keep thinking of TG-Aus's first venture into the aqua-car territory. Charlie just never really meshed with his co-presenters. One of the selling points on TG-UK though is that when May, Hamster, and Clarkson team up... they really mesh and work well together. One of my favorites being the Renault Aventime (sp?) race conversion. Also, when Clarkson teams up with just Hamster, or with just May, the result often works. One of my favorite TG-UK segments of all time was Clarkson and May going over the Malaysian cars... back in what? 2007? Off the top of my head, I'm having trouble thinking of anytime when Charlie and Warren alone teamed up, although I can think of plenty of times when Charlie and Steve teamed up, and when Steve and Warren teamed up.
This second season, with it's modified formatting, so far has had more interaction during the studio segments than monologuing, cases in points being the remake of the Trampoline ad, and the Model T. It's a small shift, but at least in the first two episodes, we seem to be getting more average screen time with each presenter. Aside from James, whose still a bit stiff (and who can blame him, he'll get better with time), Warren and Steve seem to be far more relaxed this go-around.
The end product seems to be Warren winding up more charismatic... despite being a completely and utterly insane individual.