The Grand Tour

Agricola

Looking forward to watching this.

Dave is showing all the TG specials this weekend. Watched the Patagonia one yesterday. Had forgotten a lot of it due to the skirmish in Argentina at the end! Going to record the rest of them now and watch over Xmas week.

Top Dog

I don't know about the other drivers, but the ST220 Mondeo wasn't a pro, and was driving his own car (he's on one of the groups I'm a member of on FB )

LollipopJimmy

I watched the latest episode earlier. The worst yet and I'd never expected a lot

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

JohnBoy26

I hear them advertising on radio these days. It must not have the viewership figures they were hoping for.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

latest episode....

Logistics does not equal scripting.
Taking the piss out of fans is not a great idea.

knucklehead6

Macie Brave Searchlight wrote: »

Taking the piss out of fans is not a great idea.

Why not? Anyone who’s watched Top Gear would know full well that they rip the piss out of people.

Tzardine

Macie Brave Searchlight wrote: »

Taking the piss out of fans is not a great idea.

I thought it was pretty bad form actually. Taking the piss out of the fans genuine concerns. The scripting is horrible in TGT, to the point of unwatchable for me. The awards was so predictable too. We have seen it and heard all the jokes before.

The bit is Croatia was actually one of the worst in Grand Tour history IMO.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

knucklehead6 wrote: »

Why not? Anyone who’s watched Top Gear would know full well that they rip the piss out of people.

Yeah but the only people who call it scripted are fans who actually want it to be good, rip the piss out of anyone but your true fans. And again they confuse scripting with logistical control of a movie shoot, different things altogether. Total waste of time this episode. No information and no entertainment. The 720 review was good i suppose.

God I look back on the old top gear the 911, M6, V8 Vantage on the isle of man or the budget supercars and get tearful with nostalgia. How can you take a format so good and a team with such chemistry and turn it into such a jaded, tired and forced hours of tedium. Seems to me the quality is inversely proportional to the budget.

liam7831

Seen the first two episodes decent enough

DaveyDave

Only watched 3-4 episodes of the last season and stopped. It was just lacking in something. Not that it necessarily felt scripted just somewhat awkward, like they just weren't themselves and couldn't get comfortable or somebody.

I'm hearing mixed things about the new season, others saying it's much better without the silly segments, others still saying it's bad. From the sounds of it, they still haven't the formula right? Maybe they don't feel like they're in control or something, as if there's higher ups looking over them...but at the same time, they're free to do absolutely whatever they want on Amazon so there's no pressures of regulations.

I'll try watch an episode over the weekend. I remember the news was missing it's charm in the last season.

liam7831

I always fast forward the guests bit and the silly lap times that's crap but rest ain't bad

bear1

I enjoyed that episode and I could see their point that not everything can be unscripted.
The clutch going was obviously unscripted so it's hit and miss.
Half way through the series almost and I will say it's a vast improvement over s1.
The review of the 720s was pretty good.

Tzardine

bear1 wrote: »

I enjoyed that episode and I could see their point that not everything can be unscripted.
The clutch going was obviously unscripted so it's hit and miss.
Half way through the series almost and I will say it's a vast improvement over s1.
The review of the 720s was pretty good.

The clutch going was very obviously scripted.

Spoiler alert - The clutch was fine

mikeecho

I can see that they were trying to stop all the criticism of the show (TGT) being scripted.
But it always had been, even back to the early days of TG.

Even reality shows are scripted... even the 6 o'clock news is scripted.

Tv is scripted.
Now the way they went about things, was a bit childish. I think they could have dealt with the criticism in a better way. How.. I don't know.

But one thing I take from this season, is that they are listening to the fans.
This can be seen from the changes in S2, celeb brain crash, the American etc, and complaints of being overly scripted.

bear1

Tzardine wrote: »

The clutch going was very obviously scripted.

Spoiler alert - The clutch was fine

What makes you so sure?

Tzardine

bear1 wrote: »

What makes you so sure?

*The dragging out of starting the race. i.e. We need somebody to say go, lets go and find a model. Ok now we have a model lets get her to do it. Oh no she is too attractive. Lets put her as the finish line. Lets use the sound guy instead. The car breaking down was just another means of doing this.

*Richards car breaking was the excuse for Jeremy to go off with the model. This played into the script and her being biased later on with Jeremy in the race.

*No shots of the car being worked on were shown. No signs of any mechanical failure either.

*Richard saying that he cooked the clutch. Not that the car broke down. I expect that Ariel would not have allowed them to pretend the car broke, but they were ok with Hammond saying he was responsible for burning out the clutch.

*The car was miraculously cured when the model arrived back with Jeremy. Pretty quick to source a clutch and fit it on a runway in Croatia. Yes its a Honda part, but still unlikely.

*There were a few behind the scenes videos released by TGT on the Croatia episode. None featured the car being repaired. This is unusual I would think.

Quazzie

Tzardine wrote: »

*The dragging out of starting the race. i.e. We need somebody to say go, lets go and find a model. Ok now we have a model lets get her to do it. Oh no she is too attractive. Lets put her as the finish line. Lets use the sound guy instead. The car breaking down was just another means of doing this.

*Richards car breaking was the excuse for Jeremy to go off with the model. This played into the script and her being biased later on with Jeremy in the race.

*No shots of the car being worked on were shown. No signs of any mechanical failure either.

*Richard saying that he cooked the clutch. Not that the car broke down. I expect that Ariel would not have allowed them to pretend the car broke, but they were ok with Hammond saying he was responsible for burning out the clutch.

*The car was miraculously cured when the model arrived back with Jeremy. Pretty quick to source a clutch and fit it on a runway in Croatia. Yes its a Honda part, but still unlikely.

*There were a few behind the scenes videos released by TGT on the Croatia episode. None featured the car being repaired. This is unusual I would think.

Unless I'm mistaken, Hammond said it was a "cooked clutch" at the start, but upon further inspection found that it was in fact a broken drive shaft end.

bear1

Quazzie wrote: »

Unless I'm mistaken, Hammond said it was a "cooked clutch" at the start, but upon further inspection found that it was in fact a broken drive shaft end.

Yes I just rewatched it and he does say at the start he has cooked it.
Then it cuts to where himself and Clarkson are looking at the car and he says something about snapping the drive shaft.
So I'd still say that the entire show is not full on scripted but you'd be naive to think that this type of show won't have prepared trips, reviews written in advance etc.
Compare both seasons and I'd say s2 has been much better with slight elements of the old top gear thrown in.
You see far more complaining about gt than tg even though for me tg is simply unfunny and boringly done with 0 chemistry between them.

Atlantic Dawn

Watched the most recent episode, it was terrible, why did they not give Clarkson and Hammond a car each to modify in to fire engines or something along those lines to match May, seemed really poorly thought out. I love the challenges driving across dodgy terrain and countries in literal ****boxes of cars and coping with the breakdowns and problems along the way.

OldMrBrennan83

This post has been deleted.

bear1

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Watched the most recent episode, it was terrible, why did they not give Clarkson and Hammond a car each to modify in to fire engines or something along those lines to match May, seemed really poorly thought out. I love the challenges driving across dodgy terrain and countries in literal ****boxes of cars and coping with the breakdowns and problems along the way.

One thing you'd need to remember, the fire engine challenge was mentioned on top gear after they did the ambulance challenge but they had to say it couldn't be done.
I suspect if the challenge was to build fire engines the BBC may have come knocking on their door.
They are quite limited to what they can do but it seems like they are slowly giving the beeb the finger regarding this.

.red.

Anybody know who Sylvia was?
I enjoyed the unscripted episode. Pretty sure everything including the clutch/drive shaft was all planned, that was the irony of it all!

DaveyDave

Just finished the first episode, have to say it was pretty good. Classic Top Gear style. Intro about the location suiting Jeremy and May mentioning the parcel gave me a laugh. Start of the challenge was a bit slow. Fairly long build up just to mention Hammond couldn't drive more than 100 miles on electric.

The celebrity face off is a good twice on the lap times.

All in all decent show, jokes didn't drag on too much. I hope the news has more car stuff in it like Top Gear, all they mentioned was the sweat seats by Nissan. Not about any new crazy prototypes or new Dacias!

Looking forward to the next few episodes.

Tigger

ironclaw wrote: »

He also used the same comparison between the number of radiators and his apartment from the Veyron review.

I have to say, it wasn't a bad episode. Perfectly watchable and actually witty in places. Only mark was the last part of the Chiron film, it was badly edited. I wasn't sure if they were honouring Rendevous or mocking it. In case anyone hasn't see it, this is the film:

Spoiler: The sound I believe is a Ferrari, but its dubbed in. The car was actually a Merc and it wasn't a continuous take.

also its sped up

Wibbs

Tigger wrote: »

also its sped up

It was a Mercedes alright, dubbed with a Ferrari IIRC and the driver(also the director) never went much beyond 100 KPH. However it was one take and not sped up(the length of the flic was limited by the length of a single roll of film and it only had a few seconds of film left). He had a spotter with a radio at one blindspot, but in the event his radio failed so it could have been nasty. The woman at the end was the directors girlfriend.

bear1

Watched the latest episode tonight and thought it was actually funny.
The up video was pretty nice and good to see a review of a small affordable car.
The tank was surreal, money can't buy style anyway and the last ken block video was very entertaining.

GeneralDisorder

bear1 wrote: »

Watched the latest episode tonight and thought it was actually funny.
The up video was pretty nice and good to see a review of a small affordable car.
The tank was surreal, money can't buy style anyway and the last ken block video was very entertaining.

Agree, it was the first episode I watch from the show are thought it’s getting back to the old flow

Mycroft H

Enjoying series two. Some places where I had a few laughs. Take it for what it is; entertaining car TV with an excellent soundtrack with excellent camera work. Honestly, the cinematography (can you call it that when it's a TV show?) is phenomenal. There's some iffy bits along the way but it's good enough for me.

bear1

Get rid of the celebrity segment and put a car review in it's place and I'd call it a perfect series.