By injera, on November 19th, 2008%
The first season of Top Gear Australia has… taken the chequered flag? Is that a motor-y type of pun? I have spent altogether too much time trying to think of something car-related to complete a sentence about the end of the show. That the result was so lame matches the tone, in a way, of the whole of this just-ended first run.
I tried to like TGA. Then I tried not to hate it. Now my only regret is that I don’t have the satisfaction of having dumped it before it dumped me. Last Monday’s episode was, I decided, the last one I would watch. Finding out at episode’s end that it was the last one I could watch (for the year, at least) left me feeling bitter.
Continue reading Top Gear Australia – reconsidered
By injera, on October 2nd, 2008%
I am a fan of Top Gear. I don’t know why. The closest we have to a car in this household is an empty space in the garage where we put our bikes. I don’t even have my driver’s licence. Every now and again – usually when it’s coming up to tax time and people start talking about salary sacrificing, or when something as bizarre as the Citroen C3 Pluriel comes out – we think about getting a car. Then we add up insurance and registration and petrol and subtract the odd City Saver ticket and multiply by the number of overseas trips we could have for the same carbon emission… and book a holiday. There is, then, obviously something about Top Gear for me that is not car-appeal. It’s the interaction between the hosts, the British humour, the guests in the Liana, the challenges and the travelogue aspect: Britain one minute, Spain the next… and, oh, how about a race to Norway? Given that I don’t watch the show because of a desire to research a potential vehicular purchase, alternative versions seem, well, pointless.
Continue reading Top Gear Australia
By injera, on July 6th, 2008%
Today’s Weekend Australian “Review” section has the managing director of SBS, Shaun Brown, talking about his “tumultuous tenure”. It is true that SBS has changed – perhaps for the worse – in the past few years. The Movie Show is rubbish; the actual “movie show” was, and will ever be, David and Margaret and it matters not what it is called now that it is on the ABC – it is the movie show. I don’t watch the news any more on SBS. I’m sure it continues to take a more global view than the other free-to-air news bulletins, but the shouldn’t-this-be-on-Foreign-Correspondent/Insight/insert-public-affairs-show-here interviews overwhelm me and the new format meant that I felt I was missing some key local news, so I opted to watch Ian Henderson exclusively instead (although, ABC, I still miss Angela Pippos and that buffoon Peter Wilkins was fine on The Fat all those years ago, but he is no Melbourne sports presenter).
Other critics of the new SBS accuse it of betraying its mulicultural charter. Perhaps these criticisms are valid, although the broadcaster previously suffered from characterisation as a European free-soft-porn channel. I’ve never watched Inspector Rex but I have regularly watched Mythbusters, South Park, Big Love and Top Gear, which are not at all multicultural (Grant Imahara is probably the only non-Anglo-Saxon represented in these shows).
All these criticisms aside, SBS wins my support just for the annual broadcast of the Tour de France. Every stage of the race is covered, live. Not just every stage, but more of each stage than most broadcasters show. Just one thing, SBS. The commercials. I have, unfortunately, reached the stage where I have accepted the reality of commercials on SBS. Just not the commercials shown repeatedly during the coverage of the Tour de France. Women watch cycling too! I don’t want to see “interrupted stream” and “erectile dysfunction” while I am enjoying a glass of Moet and the scenery of Brittany. I don’t want to watch Stage One, knowing that the next three weeks will be a constant stream (sorry, Mr Interrupted) of these ads.
Show some more of those clever French car ads… Please.
