Getting better all the time
May 20, 2008 by upyourego
In what pretty much turned out to be one long song based analogy - Top Gear Executive Producer, Andy Wilman, talks about series 11 of everyone’s favourite car based entertainment show.
If you don’t want to hear spoilers for the new series of Top Gear I’d suggest NOT reading on from this point as this post will be full of them.
First the date the new series is likely to kick off - well actually I don’t know - it hasn’t been properly confirmed but it looks like it’s going to be a week after the previous rumour of 15 June - it actually looks like it will probably be Sunday 22 June.
This rumour is given gravitas because of confirmation from Applause Store (the company managing audience tickets for the show) that there is a recording on 18 June - this is a Wednesday and shows are normally recorded the Wednesday before the Sunday broadcast.
Image by unknowndomain via Flickr
So now we basically know the start date of the show we can take a look at some of the things likely to feature over the six week run.
I’ve already mentioned some of the things that should be in the show - like the trio creating a new breed of police car and them also racing a hunt for a fox as a way of tackling rural issues.
But probably the most exciting of all the new announcements is the big race. Not one of the giant heavily scripted, full show races of recent series but a car vs something else race.
When talking about the race in his blog post Andy hints at the location of the race. He says: “And a clue for the geeks: we did it in Japan.”
He goes into the race further - explaining that “this one is back to basics, more hardcore, mega car, mega opponent, with a solid premise.” Which sounds really good.
It also sounds like we’re going to see more actual car reviews in the new series - something that the more hardcore petrol head fans have been crying out for.
Andy say’s “we’ll inevitably still have big films, cos it’s the only way you can enjoy the three of them cocking about together, but they’ll be shorter overall, and alongside them we’ll be inserting some quick two or three minute punk songs.”
That punk song line comes from a previous analogy that compared the big films and races to the sort of epic Prog Rock songs that Jeremy Clarkson loves so much.
So what else is changing - we know there will be fewer epic films and more car reviews.
Well we’re also going to be seeing a new character that will be in place alongside the Stig - not the Stig but a similar concept.
Andy describes it as “a bit like the Stig, but not like the Stig, who hopefully does exciting stuff for everyone’s amusement.”
There will also be a few tweeks to the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment, well when I say a few changes what I really mean is that they have decided to “get some new chairs”.
And, assuming it wasn’t a joke - which it could be, control over the pictures shown on screen given to the presenters during the news segment.
“And then Richard suggested that during the news, the presenters themselves - instead of the trained technicians in the broadcast trucks - should have control over pulling up the pictures and cueing all the stuff on the screens.”
Basically the new series, apart from a few tweeks and minor alterations will be pretty much steady as she goes. Andy tells us to “think of the forthcoming series then as a familiar friend, your favourite old jumper that brings comfort, warmth, and things you’ve seen before.”
So what sort of things are we going to see in the series - other than the tweeks and minor changes mentioned above?
Well, as mentioned above - the team will be tackling more issues this series. One of which will be the rural variety - more specifically the Fox Hunting Ban and “fascist ramblers”.
This makes sense given that, with the exception of James, the other two are very middle class country dwellers.
They will also be going “to war, literally, with a German version of Top Gear (which incidentally means Sabine is back)” and there will be a shootout with the RS6 against the “most suicidal of skiers.”
The other big change, or more specifically concept tweek is that they’ve been looking back “over the last two or three runs and noticed that a whole programme can get swallowed up by one monster film - a bit like one of those Yes albums from the 70s where side one is just one track - so we’re trying to calm down the prog rock side.”
There you have it - a new series of Top Gear likely to start on 22 June (just over a month away) with a few minor tweeks to the series look and concept as well as some very exciting sounding challenges and a lot of short run cocking about.
Can’t wait.
Loading ...
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!