As for the US viewing cars as appliances, that’s years of Detroit working on us (after the 60s, anyway). That and our roads tend to be mostly straight long-distance highways whereas Europe tends to have lesser amounts of expansive straight line highways.

And if it aired on state-controlled NBC, then there would be no Top Gear as Pelosi and the gang would have a fit over the Global Warming the show would be emitting.

As others have said, the show is mostly about the three characters that run the show. The only way you make a show that’s as good is if you find three people who are interested in cars who are also as interesting as Clarkson, May and Hammond.

GM is going to pull ALL network advertising if the American version of Jeremy Clarkson truthfully tells small-car shoppers to avoid Chevrolet dealerships like the plague, as long as the sole offerings are the Cobalt and Aveo.

Agreed, to a point – there’s opinionated (the Aveo sucks), and there’s loudmouthed and stupid (avoid Chevy because the Aveo sucks). In fact, I think that’s the worst part of their show.

A lot of what comes out of Jeremy Clarkson’s mouth is done to promote Jeremy Clarkson, to be frank. In that vein, he’s a lot like politico-entertainers in our country. No reason why that would necessarily have to be replicated on an American version of TG.

Here’s why:

1) You want a male demographic? Here it is. And cars aren’t the only things males buy – clothes, beer, Axe, video games, you name it. None of these have anything to do with automotive advertising dollars. Attract a large enough audience, and advertisers will buy time regardless.

2) There’s no reason why carmakers who sell the really good stuff – you know, the cars that aren’t going to get panned because they rock – could get offended. I mean, what risk is there of someone going off on a BMW M3?

3) Counter-programming? How about NBC putting “Top Gear” up against “The Bachelor”? ROFLOL!!!!!!!

4) Amp up the babe content. Brits love the tabloid feel of TG (hell, they love tabloid journalism), but nothing sells on American TV like T and A.

5) What the hell? It can’t be worse than “Dancing with the Stars.”

Not to turn this into the Truth About Television, but the first true reality show was An American Family, which was broadcast by PBS in the spring of 1973. It chronicled the travails of the Loud family of California.

psharjinian: This is true, and as someone who has been laid up in an Italian hotel with a flu I can agree with you, and that has a lot to do with Italian TV’s ownership being a lot like American broadcast television and very unlike the BBC.

Our local public television station runs “britcoms” produced by the BBC every Saturday night. They are not any better than American sitcoms, and, in fact, except for Keeping Up Appearances, are usually worse. The police dramas, meanwhile, really aren’t any better than the original Law and Order.

We look down on the original Law and Order largely because it has been around so long, and we are tired of it.

psharjinian: US network television is very bad. For the occasional Lost (which wouldn’t have made it without Survivor’s trail-breaking the “Hot People Marooned” concept) and Pushing Daisies (which only lasted one season, mostly because of the writer’s strike), there’s a an awful lot of awful, far more than in publicly-funded TV.

U.S. network isn’t very bad…it’s more like a whole lot of average, with some moments of brilliance sprinkled here and there.

Which is pretty much the same for foreign television, Hollywood and the foreign film industry. (We think that foreign films and television shows are better because we get the best stuff, not the average stuff. For every Slumdog Millionaire there are ten foreign movies as boring and trite as anything starring Jennifer Aniston.)

For that matter, the automobile industry – foreign and domestic – operates pretty much the same way.

Pch101: The BBC has no advertising. Funny how that allows for better television.

For this type of show to work, I agree that the creators and hosts need to be free from worrying whether an advertiser might be offended.

GM is going to pull ALL network advertising if the American version of Jeremy Clarkson truthfully tells small-car shoppers to avoid Chevrolet dealerships like the plague, as long as the sole offerings are the Cobalt and Aveo.

If that pressure remains, however, the show has lost all credibility.

It’s like the “reviews” of vehicles in our local Sunday paper. The writer never has a bad word to say about ANY vehicle he reviews. The reviews, of course, appear in the section carrying the full-page ads for local car dealers.

Needless to say, that is the first section used for the kitty litter boxes…

I saw the overhead shot of the teeny track-in-a-box, but I thought, well, I’ll stick it out.

Then I saw that they were going to do it with people standing around, without any practice or training, but I thought, well, I’ll stick it out.

Then I saw Leno jabbering on like it was some kind of big PR event taking place in Times Square instead of a competition, but I thought, well, I’ll stick it out.

Then I saw Drew Barrymore take off without the slightest chirp of wheelspin or drama, but I thought, well, I’ll stick it out.

Then I saw her drive straight down the side of the box, instead of following the track, and nothing was said about it. That’s when I removed Leno’s show from the TiVo.

His studio isn’t far from Burbank Airport; they could have built a track there, and had the celebs take practice laps and do it properly at high speeds, then show the best lap. You know, rip off the good stuff along with the basic concept. But they didn’t, and it was total fail.

And the worst part, I think, is a split between how much extra time it took to do it the way they were doing it (for so much less entertainment value), and how disappointed I was to see that Focus moving so slowly on such a small track.

Because the NA version would be an embarrassingly bad version of the show.

Think Euro Focus > NA Focus.
Think Falcon > Taurus

You CANNOT recreate the chemistry between the three. They were considering a Top Gear America and even asked Jay Leno to do it. He declined because he know it would suck.

As for Rush…well…it was nice to hear some truth and common sense on NBC. Was actually refreshing.

You are exactly right on every point.

TGA has about 5% of the entertainment value of TGUK and Fifth Gear. I’d even argue that FG and TGUK compliment each other. TGUK is nutty where grandiose statements abound suck as Clarkson declaring about every episode or two that a particular car is the best every or the worse ever that he’d driven. Fifth Gear does what seems like more clinical reviews of vehicles with a little silliness mixed in as well.

And yes TG UK is “made” by Mays, Hammond and Clarkson. They are equally important to the “formula”. I really like May’s counter culture to the other two.

I hope they continue to make more episodes of the UK shows.

Any other shows I need to look for anyone?

Bingo.

I’ll bet Ford was thrilled when Rush got out of the Electric Focus, singing the praises of electric propulsion, just after double-donking the Al Gore and Ed Begley cutouts. This kind of hypocrisy is classic Rush.

Top Gear succeeds because of Clarkson, Hammond, and May, pure and simple. Their ridiculous stunts and antics are hilarious because they are such great physical comedians, and the three of them work together in a way that you cannot simply replicate with three random people. Fifth Gear is watchable, not nearly as good as Top Gear, but watchable, because they know they don’t have presenters in that league, and so they don’t try to copy the Top Gear formula.

Top Gear Australia tries to copy the formula exactly, minus the funny presenters, and it’s unwatchable.

Adam Corolla is no Clarkson, and he was going to be teamed with two guys with no broadcast experience. It would’ve sucked, hard.

Clarkson, lying on the ground behind his “Mercedes Big” after pushing it five feet saying “I’ve got Ebola” is a kind of funny that you can’t duplicate.

I’m writing, on my own, an essay on the difference on the American and European car cultures. I’ve always wondered why Americans see cars as appliances. My aunt, for example, is not a car person and usually just drives her dull gray Camry from home to work and back.

Perhaps this is why our cars are so bad; we Americans don’t appreciate our cars because gas is so cheap and the drive is boring and dull. We Americans also don’t demand more from our cars other than to get from point A to point B. We don’t care for things like design or handling or interior trim, just comfy seats and cup holders. That may also perhaps explain why automatics are far more prevalent than manual transmissions in North America compared to Europe.

Finally, many have asked why Top Gear could never come to an American network and I think I have the reason why: there aren’t enough episodes of the show to justify putting it on the schedule. For example, Top Gear usually has less than a dozen episodes per series – series 11 last year had only six episodes – while an American television season has around 26 episodes. It’s not cost effective to transplant a British show to an American network and creating an American adaptation would be the best network option, if not for the fact that I’m concerned it would run out of interesting material and be forever compared – and criticized – to the original. An American Top Gear can’t win.

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that if Rush Limbaugh hadn’t been involved with this, a lot of the negativity towards the segment would be non-existent. In fact I’d go so far as to bet that this article wouldn’t have been created if he hadn’t been included. Kudos to those who are posting solely in regards to the automotive aspects of his show.

Yes, well, if you make your living condemning, degrading and dividing people in the way Mr. Limbaugh does, you had better be squeaky clean youself.

Personally, I don’t care that he was addicted to painkillers. I do care that he has the gall to make moral judgments of people in spite of that. It’s like an inverse version of Gore Vidal’s arrogance about addiction.

The problem isn’t that American TV can’t come up with a good show, it’s that they very often don’t dare to unless someone else tried the formula first. Reality TV’s way was paved by, of all things, PBS, although it didn’t get real traction until “The Beach” led to “Survivor” whose low costs and high ratings sent execs scrambling for content.

American TV is very, very formulaic and very risk-averse.

Spend time in Europe, and you will discover that each nation has its share of schlocky television shows, too. They aren’t all glued to the screen watching Masterpiece Theater or the latest high-brow adaptation of a Jane Austen novel.

This is true, and as someone who has been laid up in an Italian hotel with a flu I can agree with you, and that has a lot to do with Italian TV’s ownership being a lot like American broadcast television and very unlike the BBC.

You’re right to a point…but Lost, and Desperate Housewives were actually quite innovative (for their time), as is the new Flashforward. Pushing Daisies was also quite good, but the audience didn’t want it.
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Quite a few regular network shows in the U.S. are very good, and the series on the premium cable channels easily match anything from Europe in quality and originality.

Premium cable channels have a lot more latitude than the broadcast networks: they’re not as beholden to advertisers and creative control is generally more in the hands of the artists and less in the committee.

US network television is very bad. For the occasional Lost (which wouldn’t have made it without Survivor’s trail-breaking the “Hot People Marooned” concept) and Pushing Daisies (which only lasted one season, mostly because of the writer’s strike), there’s a an awful lot of awful, far more than in publicly-funded TV.

This is a personal bone of contention: I don’t think art (and yes, this is art, in a way) should be designed by committee and intentionally risk-averse. I think that’s a really effective way to stymie social evolution. It doesn’t need to be offensive, but it should be excellent, challenging and fresh, not dumbed down to the lowest common denominator.

Top Gear, stale as it seems to be some days, would never, ever make it onto American broadcast TV for that reason: it’d be bound to offend someone. Can’t have that.

Real nice comment there. I hope that this person or nobody in his family ever gets an addiction to prescription drugs, prescribed by an MD. Sort of like one one columnist said at the time; “liberals have finally found a drug addict they can hate.” Despicable.