Top Gear Polar expedition

Pretty good piece of entertainment.

My only slight worry is that they never went more than 5 miles from the airport and just patched the film together with local scenes. Certainly I don't believe the footage happened in the order they showed it in - some of the crazy antics throwing the 4WD around in the snowfields you wouldn't do a 500km from civilization. Good fun though if you take it as a celebration of laddishness rather than a literal documentary

Have I grown out of this programme? I now find most of the shows child like to the extreme. Any real information is just not there.
Or has it always been like this and Mr Grumpy has just realised?

Howard

Let's not be coy about this - it's all staged. It's not really a car magazine anymore, just a magazine programme that has a few cars in it, and that's probably because the Tiff Needle approach was crushingly boring.

I saw a repeat of the camping holiday episode recently and it was hilarious, but tell me how the camera just happened to be trained on the front corner of the caravan when it hit a standing bollard and took the corner off, or how the camera was filming Jeremy cooking (!! come on!!) when the fire broke out, and how the camera remained in place inside the caravan while Hamster kept dashing in to throw things out of the window (cameraman still inside???), and how the camera just happened to film the flaming cushion fly through the air to land against the adjacent tent and set fire to it! Hhmmm... pretty unlikely to catch all these "accidents". I also remember the one in the States when Jeremy turns up with a cow on his car explaining "I just thought I'd go for a last drive around and see what I could find". Yeah, right!
Makes great TV though. I'm not complaining - I was wetting myself. But I'm not stupid.

Maybe the Tiff Needell is what's needed in a CAR MAGAZINE programme. Leave the silly slapstick to Last of the Summer Wine or the Chuckle Brothers.
Do you expect a quiz in the middle of Star Trek or Dr Who, a room make over during the news? I don't think so.

Bring back VBH

They crossed the line of over staging the program a while ago IMO. All three have perfected the faux look of spontaneity. Oscars all round.

Still watchable but degraded nevertheless.

Well, I'm off to the Arctic on my bike tonight.
I may be some time.

Was having a sense of humour failure yesterday evening so only managed to watch 15 mins. I thought it was silly & pointless.

Feeling better today though so might watch the repeat

I liked the way they fixed the flat tyre. Must try that sometime.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Bring back VBH

ill second that

LOL I nearly started a thread about this and all their other 'challenges' which I think are all staged as Rasher says - good entertainment but faked!

Take the Polar thing - we have to believe that there is a second vehicle stuffed full of camera crew who go ahead - get out - film Clarkson driving by as fast as he can - get back in - overtake Clarkson and repeat endlessly without hiccup. Yeah right.

This is exactly what happened on their Bugatti Veyron thingy run - the world's fastest road car gets overtaken by the camera crew who film Clarkson driving by at the speed of a thousand gazelles then they get back in and overtake him and do it all again 50 to 60 times or the BBC shells out for 50 to 60 separate film crews to line the route? I don't think so. Imagine 50 odd film crews lining the route at -40 degrees near the North pole waiting for Clarkson to happen by. Bollocks. It's faked and always has been. Just like the mountain biker shooting over the top of James May's car in Portugal or wherever it was just at the right moment. Bah humbug.

I don't mind at all a bit (or even a lot) of artistic licence in making Top Gear but I would like to know where it begins and ends. For example, did they actually drive to the Pole at all in this show? Did any of them sleep in tents on the ice or were they on the piss every night in Rekjavik. If the whole premise of these silly adventures is bogus then I'm not interested anymore - the writing is just not good enough if it is pure fiction.

Maybe they were in the same film studio where the moon landings were shot?

quote:

Originally posted by Rasher:
...
I also remember the one in the States when Jeremy turns up with a cow on his car explaining "I just thought I'd go for a last drive around and see what I could find". Yeah, right!
Makes great TV though. I'm not complaining - I was wetting myself. But I'm not stupid.

We only saw that episode this month here in NZ!

But I agree, it is good entertainment!

Pete

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Maybe they were in the same film studio where the moon landings were shot?

Peter Belt's studio?

Well to be fair he did mention at one point that the other two cars were on the horizon.

Also Hamster really did not like that woman, that was not put on.

Bloody hell!
I just thought it was a good bit of telly.

My wife and I nearly wet ourselves when they were learning to ski. Hamster saying sorry evey 5 seconds whilst sliding backwards down the hill was perfect.

Also Mr. Pixelface pushing Clarkson in the water was not staged. Well I could not see the frogman under the ice.

Bloody funny, who cares if bits are staged, the bad tempered bits always ring true. Ask anybody who was done extended field trials.

Jono

Er,To contradict myself,that bit was a bit dodgy,Clarkson is an unfit middle aged smoker,water at that temprature can cause heart failure in seconds.

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Maybe they were in the same film studio where the moon landings were shot?

That's for the next series when they "do" land a car on the moon.

Andrew

I think they do actually do their expeditions as it is such great TV and the audience is now far broader than the original, frankly dull, original. That they use some staging along the way to spice things up I think adds to the appeal of the programme and IMO opinion, they currently have a perfect balance. Let's not forget that Hamster nearly died, so it isn't a complete fraud.
Again, it's another example of how the BBC have raised their game and taken a tired programme to a new level. The BBC are wiping the floor with the other channels at the moment.
It's great telly. What else matters?

Is that why his face was pixellated - because he pushed Clarkson into the water (didn't see this bit though tbh) ?

Anyway, I think we can take it as read that it is staged pretty much in its entirety, as exemplified by their claimed 3-day stay in the "boulder field", during which Clarkson claimed in the voice-over that they were all alone and there was no-one out to rescue them...and yet they were being filmed by someone throughout.

Also, if they really had been the first people ever to drive a car to the North Pole, wouldn't it have made the news or something? (Or maybe it did and I missed it...)

quote:

Originally posted by bad boy dan:
Er,To contradict myself,that bit was a bit dodgy,Clarkson is an unfit middle aged smoker,water at that temprature can cause heart failure in seconds.

Perhaps that was the intention.

Did everyone watch the same programme as me?

They never claimed to be alone did they? In many shots there was clearly a 2nd red toyota with their Icelandic guides and spares in it and a third black vehicle for the crew and often they made reference to those same cars. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. Clearly Hamster and his girlfriend weren't alone either and their crew would be travlling in their own transport.

All pieces of telly like this are cut from far greater levels of footage and many pieces are shot and re-shot. In the past Clarkson has been quite candid about them doing the trips, or at leats pices of the trips, twice - first to do it and secondly to film it properly.

Given recent media related issues, do you really think the BBC would lie about where ey were and having reached the pole? Unlikeley?

Excellent telly and worth the licence fee. Sort of.

Did I miss something here? I watched it last night. When it was it on first then?