New Series: Top Gear

steveland?

New series of Top Gear starts Sunday at 8 on BBC2

Just thought id spread the good news

irishgeo

great. its a good show. i love small car time thing.the best bit was the blind man beating richard wiley time.

OfflerCrocGod

Yep I can't wait for this show to come back! There is a countdown clock on finalgear.com which shows the time down to the seconds

Skyuser

YES!!! I Luv it....

stag39

wahoo!!! i wonder who will break the lap record in the celeb challange this year..

fletch

Yay....can't wait for the new series!

aidan_dunne

Excellenté! Can't wait. That's my Sunday night well and truly sorted then. 'Top Gear' at 8, then flip over to Sky One for '24' at 9. Nice one!

In the words of Jezza........ "Release The Stig!"

byte

Ah, exemellent! My Sunday's shall be fulfilled again! \o/

weemcd

\o/

top gear is sunday nights

mr_angry

Yeeeesssssssss!

mike65

Pah, we on the Motors forum all watch Car File...*cough*

Mike.

napalm@night

/me jumps around the room in an high state of excitment

celticfc

\0/, Definitley one of the best shows around.

Big Nelly

Great show...thanks God its back on was actually having to watch Dream Team ther ein the 8-9 slot for the last while.....brain can adjust back to normal TV at last!!

qz

Only about 4 days, 4 hours, 20 minutes, and 46 seconds until the new Top Gear season starts on May 22nd!

Without a doubt, the best show on TV.

full forward

SO who is the Stig? Is it Damon Hill?

Big Nelly

full forward wrote:

SO who is the Stig? Is it Damon Hill?

Yeah I was thinking that for the last while alright.....

Keyzer

As they say in the Gaeltacht - Savaiste....

Stig = defo Damon Hill

kaimera

not hill

Lump

Keyser, it's not. Think they've changed it again.

John

NewFrockTuesday

I love RH!

Lump

Read the bit about the Stig, about half way down.

BBC Internal Newspaper wrote:

Welcome to worship with JC
There’s an air of hushed expectation among the audience who will witness the making of Top Gear and the arrival of its charismatic presenter. Deep in the Surrey countryside, James Price joined the ritual.

You can sense the excitement as the people start to filter into the half-light of the hangar. It’s a bit like being a tourist in a cathedral. Groups start to gather around some of the more impressive icons on display. A few cheekily dare to sit on the chairs carefully arranged on the high altar and take pictures of each other, grinning, until they are politely ushered away by the authorities.

Others dart from spot to spot, staring with a mixture of pleasure and awe at the gleaming sculptures.

The ceremony is about to begin and the only thing missing now is the arrival of the priests.

The excitement boils over with a cheer as the high priest himself strides into the middle of the domain. Standing 6ft 4in tall, topped with curly hair, and dressed in a smart, but casual fashion, he is instantly recognisable to the men and women who gaze eagerly upon him.

Or putting it another way, it’s 3pm on Wednesday and Jeremy Clarkson has arrived to start filming the second episode of the current series of Top Gear in front of a studio audience.

Visiting Dunsfold airfield in Surrey to watch proceedings, it is hard not to draw the religious parallels.

Executive producer Gary Hunter quips: ‘Clarkson’s initials are JC, so perhaps it’s no coincidence.’

It should therefore come as little surprise to see a nun admiring an outrageously phallic pink car – a new FAB1 built by Ford for the forthcoming Thunderbirds film. Sister Wendy is no fake, however. She is spending a day at Dunsfold, having helped Top Gear with an item entitled ‘nun in a monster truck.’

As if recalling a faintly traumatic dream, the only description she manages to muster is: ‘it was absolutely huge, just huge’.

Next to FAB1 and half a dozen other pristine cars, the gnarled wreck of what was once a Toyota HiLux pickup truck looks rather out of place. And yet Top Gear clearly regard this peculiar object with a special reverence.

The pickup achieved the automotive equivalent of sainthood last series, when it survived a seemingly murderous combination of being crashed, blown up, drowned and burned – in a practical demonstration of just how indestructible these 4x4s really are.

As with all religious events, an edge of mystery is required – and this is amply provided by ‘the Stig’.

A racing driver who never speaks or reveals his face, the Stig is the Top Gear equivalent of the man with no name in westerns.

The idea is that he drives all the cars being tested on the same racetrack (specially designed by Lotus for Top Gear), allowing a league table of comparative performances to be built up over the series.

More surprisingly, he never reveals his face at Dunsford, remaining hidden behind his racing helmet, or at least a balaclava.

Hunter reveals: ‘Only three people in the crew know his name. When he appeared in the studio once, people were transfixed by the presence of this guy with a white racing suit and a helmet. It was as if some kind of god had appeared in their midst, beamed down from another planet.’

Originally the idea was to call him ‘the gimp’, but the name was thought a touch too S&M, so in the end it was Clarkson who suggested Stig – the name given to newcomers at his school.

Filming starts at 9am, long before the fans arrive, with the roar of a McLaren-Mercedes SLR as the Stig races the first of several cars around the track. The £312,000 supercar turns out to beat the lap record with a time of 1 minute, 20.9 seconds.

Only the film crew is allowed beyond a white line of the tarmac – and when a later Ferrari slides momentarily off the track just yards away from the half-dozen film crew, it is easy to see that the ambulance on standby is not there for decoration.

‘I spend a good chunk of my time dealing with health and safety issues,’ says series producer Gary Broadhurst. With a crew that tops 70 people, not to mention the studio audience of 250, this is hardly surprising.

The operation is extensive. In addition to the film crew out on the track, there are those working in the studio (the hangar which once serviced harrier jump-jets), crews with OB trucks, caterers and drivers attached to the cars being put through their paces.

Wednesday is the busiest day of a hectic week-long production scheduled that culminates in the show being broadcast on BBC Two at 8pm on Sunday. The routine is now well established with the new version of Top Gear now in its fourth series.

The schedule is cramped during the ten programme series in order to create a live feel for the show. News items are selected on the Monday, with Tuesday given over to developing a script – with the active involvement of all three presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.

At around midday on Wednesday, the celebrity guest – this time it’s hypnotist Paul McKenna – appears by the track and prepares to race a Suzuki Liana, in competition against times set by other celebs queuing up to take the challenge.

McKenna also joins presenter Richard Hammond in an Alpha Romeo 166 for a track test. Unfortunately for Hammond, he is unaware that his ability to drive a car has been temporarily removed and he sits fumbling at the controls in the mistaken belief that the gearstick will somehow steer the car.

Material filmed around the track is then edited on site and played out to the studio audience later the same day. To increase efficiency, these same edits can be used when the finished programme is broadcast on Sunday.

Adding to the mix of action on the track and in the nearby studio, there are packages that have been filmed some weeks in advance. Throughout the production process, another innovative editing wheeze has been employed.

The Soho-based production house that edits the packages encodes them as files that can be viewed online as web-streams as soon as they’re ready. Rather than having to bike tapes around the place, the likes of Jeremy Clarkson can access the latest edits from home and start working on the script.

After the bustle of Wednesday, the programme swiftly moves into the final phases of editing as the Sunday transmission time looms.

With a revamped Top Gear in its fourth series and attracting a weekly audience in excess of 3m, who’s to say that resurrection isn’t possible?

Board@Work

Do you think in this series they will secume to pressure and evaluate more modestly priced cars..


I Wish they would do bikes as well.. who says it has to be just about cars

Big Nelly

markororke wrote:

Do you think in this series they will secume to pressure and evaluate more modestly priced cars..


I Wish they would do bikes as well.. who says it has to be just about cars

Clarkson hates bikes and he is really Top Gear......he is gas man!! sometimes they do modestly priced car....but no fun in that!!

mike65

24 hrs and 40 mins to go!

Mike.

OfflerCrocGod

According to the wiki entry about Top Gear the first presenter was a woman! I can't believe that :eek:

Dinner

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

According to the wiki entry about Top Gear the first presenter was a woman! I can't believe that :eek:

Angela Rippon they call here all the way back in '77 it was. I cant imagine a Top Gear without Clarkson. I love his wit. I hope May and Hammond are still there too.