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Tribute to Sabine was wonderful. Really encapsulated just how good she was not just on the show but in her racing as well if even Toto Wolff spoke high praise of her.
 
Sabine tribute is amazing honestly. Wasn't expecting the Toto or Susie in there as well. You can tell she really means a lot to lots of different people.

As for the rest of the season, I like how super condensed it is. All about cars with minimal studio segments and no useless celebrity interviews. Shame each season is getting shorter and shorter but if it means more frequent seasons then all good.
 
AudiMan2011
Tribute to Sabine was wonderful. Really encapsulated just how good she was not just on the show but in her racing as well if even Toto Wolff spoke high praise of her.
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Was it longer than the clip posted over on her RIP thread? I saw Toto and David Coulthard listed in the credits but didn't see them in that 3 minute clip.
 
I'm still surprised they got Clarkson, Hammond and May back for that episode. I know I'll be hated for saying this, but I wish Chris Evans would have come on. After all, he was the one who hired her as a full-on Top Gear presenter.

I had a dream last night that seemed to be triggered by that episode. I don't have many dreams, so this was a bit of a surprise. In one bit, a girl actually liked me and told me over Instagram messages that she'd liked me for a long time (it is a dream, of course), and in my dream I 'read' a news story that said Clarkson, Hammond and/or May were going to make a cameo appearance on Top Gear in addition to the current cast. We can all dream...
 
Although this latest season wasn't the strongest (I think there's pandemic related reasons for that), I think the current lineup of TG is the best they've ever had. I'll admit I did love the old Top Gear, but the older I got, the more I realised that I couldn't relate to three posh southern bell ends. The Clarkson era was just as full of messing about and daft challenges as it is now, not much has changed, except the cast is actually funny and likeable. Also, who actually watches TG for the car reviews?? They're the most generic, boring part of the show, hands down. Harris in some daft supercar, "it's made of this, it's got that...and it can do this", cue drifting around the airfield. Didn't see that coming. The GR Yaris was cool because it's the most exciting car to come out in years and is relatively affordable, but other than that the airfield reviews are a snoozer.

More whacking golf balls at Paddy while he's sat in an Escort wearing a suit of armour please.
 
Doomotron
I know I'll be hated for saying this, but I wish Chris Evans would have come on. After all, he was the one who hired her as a full-on Top Gear presenter.
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Chris had to deliver the news story live on his Breakfast radio show. Ignoring the fact he was shooting from the hip and mixed up his Daytona's with his Laguna Seca's you could hear him struggling to keep it together a bit. The clip is embedded in this news article.

Honestly I could have done without DC or Toto, and I wasn't that convinced by Susie either, but I'm glad they got as many of the presenters on as they did.

merseyxshore
I think the current lineup of TG is the best they've ever had.
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I'm warming to it, as I said on the previous page I think Flintoff is a real surprise and a great addition, but there's just something not quite right with Paddy and Chris sometimes. It kinda feels like a battle between what's been scripted, and what seems right for the moment.
 
merseyxshore
three posh southern bell ends
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They're not quite as southern as you might think, at least by upbringing.

May is the southernest of the three of them, born in Bristol, but he spent a chunk of his teenage and young adult years in the north, going to a comprehensive school in Rotherham and then university in L*ncashire. Hammond is a midlander, born in Solihull. Like May, he then went north for school and university - although "posh" certainly applies as he went to Ripon grammar and then Harrogate for university - and stayed up here working on radio in Leeds, Newcastle, Teesside, York, Cumbria, and L*ncashire.

Clarkson was born and raised in Doncaster, but went a bit south for secondary school (Repton in Derbyshire), before going back north to work for a local newspaper in Rotherham.

Of course, all three live in the south now - Hammersmith, Herefordshire, and Chipping Norton respectively.


Then again, McGuinness and Flintoff now both live in the same mega-wealthy Cheshire corridor that almost all professional footballers and TV personalities reside in. Not quite the same as posh, but some distance from everyman.
 
Famine
They're not quite as southern as you might think, at least by upbringing.

May is the southernest of the three of them, born in Bristol, but he spent a chunk of his teenage and young adult years in the north, going to a comprehensive school in Rotherham and then university in L*ncashire. Hammond is a midlander, born in Solihull. Like May, he then went north for school and university - although "posh" certainly applies as he went to Ripon grammar and then Harrogate for university - and stayed up here working on radio in Leeds, Newcastle, Teesside, York, Cumbria, and L*ncashire.

Clarkson was born and raised in Doncaster, but went a bit south for secondary school (Repton in Derbyshire), before going back north to work for a local newspaper in Rotherham.

Of course, all three live in the south now - Hammersmith, Herefordshire, and Chipping Norton respectively.


Then again, McGuinness and Flintoff now both live in the same mega-wealthy Cheshire corridor that almost all professional footballers and TV personalities reside in. Not quite the same as posh, but some distance from everyman.
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To be fair, the "southern" thing isn't really relevant outside of the fact that there's now two good, wholesome north west lads on the show. Clarkson, May and Hammond are definitely posh and definitely out of touch though.
True enough about the Cheshire corridor, but like a lot of footballers, Paddy comes from a council estate, and Freddy's dad used to sleep in the car on his cricket travels, so I'm sure there's more of us who can relate to their backgrounds than toffs who went to the kind of straw-boater schools that the eejits in government went to haha.

I think their scripted studio chemistry definitely needs work, but when they're out in the wild having a genuine laugh together, it's a proper joy to see.
 
I think that Top Gear's ever-increasing viewing figures are a sign that people like the current trio - certainly a lot more than Matt, Chris and Rory. Although I'm sad Matt and Rory especially have gone, the current trio get along a lot better, even if Chris seems like an odd one out. That said, so were Jason Dawe and James May, and the latter was the best one in my opinion. I do believe, however, that the 6 million viewers Top Gear gets now are a different 6 million people to the 6/7 million people who watched Clarkson's Top Gear. As the BBC said themselves, Top Gear appeals to a much younger audience now. I think that's fine, but it might alienate a lot of the fans of 'old' Top Gear and The Grand Tour. The episode of TGT where Jeremy puts 'vote Labour' stickers on his car and James makes disgusting smoothies to sarcastically appeal to young people wouldn't happen in new Top Gear, because they have to appeal to a generation who actually vote Labour and drink 🤬.
 
Sabine Schmitz was a main presenter in Series 23 but was later demoted to a minor presenter, and that gave me a thought. In Chris Evans' vision of Top Gear, there was going to be a large cast of presenters which would allow a lot of content to be made for the show, which would go with their 'bigger, better' philosophy. Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc were the main presenters, Eddie Jordan* and Sabine were secondary presenters, and Rory Reid and Chris Harris were minor presenters, appearing only in car reviews (although I believe Rory was involved in a film that was never aired, either because of complications during filming or because of the series being shortened from 10 episodes to 6). As we all know, in the end the show was a failure and Chris left, with Matt becoming the 'leader' (and arguably did a far better job than Evans*), with Chris and Rory being promoted to main presenter status and Eddie and Sabine being demoted to being minor presenters. Eddie Jordan didn't appear for much longer leaving before Series 26 I believe.

However, a thought that comes to mind is what if Chris Evans' Top Gear hadn't failed? We know that there had been internal issues between Matt and Chris Evans, meaning one of them could possibly have left even if the show had worked. I'd like to hear what everybody thinks about this, but I believe Chris and Rory would have stayed as minor presenters, mostly staying on Extra Gear. I expect Eddie Jordan would have left anyway as he wasn't particularly liked by the audience from what I've heard. It could have left Sabine as one of the main presenters, and as much as I liked her I didn't think she'd be a very good presenter. I expect that she'd also leave Top Gear, and should Matt have left as well because of the family issues he had which made him actually leave, we could have had Chris Evans, Rory Reid and Chris Harris as the new trio. I believe it could have worked better than Rory, Chris Harris and Matt LeBlanc since you wouldn't be putting two small-time car journalists with Joey from Friends himself, but you'd have a similar issue, where Rory, Chris H and Chris E's differing personalities could have driven them apart or at least made them have bad chemistry.

In the end, we may well have ended up in the same situation we're in now, with Rory being dismissed, and Chris Harris being joined by two other presenters.

But what if Matt LeBlanc wasn't the second main presenter? Him and Chris Evans didn't get along, so if he was a secondary or even minor presenter, perhaps with Chris and/or Rory taking over his role, the show might have gone a lot better... Or not much better, I don't know... That said, the entire cast (Evans, Matt, Eddie, Sabine, Harris and Rory) didn't get along that well together anyway, as shown in S23E6, where they were all together for just one segment. There was no chemistry whatsoever in it...

Fun fact: Eddie Jordan was the only presenter to also appear in the Star In A Reasonably Priced/Reasonably Fast/Rallycross Car segment as a guest. In S23E2, he appeared as part of 'Team Top Gear', against Seasick Steve and Sharleen Spiteri.
While Matt, Rory and Chris Harris did a far better job at Top Gear than the previous cast, Matt was always slightly 'unnatural' while presenting, and Chris Evans was a long-time television presenter. I believe that if Chris Evans calmed down a lot (like how he was in the later episodes of Series 23), they show could have done better.
I think losing Rory was a mistake; I always thought he was the nicest and most wholesome Top Gear presenter.
 
I finally caught Top Gear's Sabine tribute last night, and...

What a loss. She certainly had a lot more to give the world. Looking back at those old footages of her, I was reminded of how infectious her energy and her mischievous streak could be.

However, I had a serious issue with that program, or more specifically, with how Clarkson did his segment. It must be my first time ever, but I was really cross with how he acted. I know being smug old man that you want to punch in the face is his shtick, but there are always, ALWAYS, right time and place for that. But he was like "she was mean to me and my feelings were hurt" and "I was in a Jag and she in a van, but still, I was better than her". The nicest thing he said about her during the show was that she was "bright and loud"... :irked:
 
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Just thought I'd let you guys know that all episodes of 'new' Top Gear are now on BBC Iplayer.

Its from the returning Clarkson/re-vamped show when it came back in 2001 all the way up to the latest from Paddy, Fred and Chris and that includes specials and best-of's. 30 series and 242 episodes in all!

Enjoy!
 
MUSC4EVER
Just thought I'd let you guys know that all episodes of 'new' Top Gear are now on BBC Iplayer.

Its from the returning Clarkson/re-vamped show when it came back in 2001 all the way up to the latest from Paddy, Fred and Chris and that includes specials and best-of's. 30 series and 242 episodes in all!

Enjoy!
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It's amazing that they really did this. Up until now, the you could only buy Series 6 onwards (from what I've seen - it was certainly the case on Google Play). I am genuinely surprised that Series 1 is available (I see what people meant about Jason now!), but not as surprised as seeing Series 9 Episode 1 on there. Isn't this the first time that episode has ever been on a streaming service or in syndication?
 
Series 1 was indeed never shown on the Dave repeats run, they always started with S2E1. I don't think they ever did show S9E1 either, no.

Even more surprising (or not, depending on your thoughts on the BBC) is that they left Jimmy Savile references in S2E2. Did they just not check all the episodes, or didn't care? I'm sure Dave edited it out.
 
What I'm interested in is whether they leave the Senna tribute in. They edited that off Dave as well and the ending was the Cruise/Diaz interview.
 
Rossell2
What I'm interested in is whether they leave the Senna tribute in. They edited that off Dave as well and the ending was the Cruise/Diaz interview.
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Nope, it's not there. Licensing reasons apparently, I assume the Senna Foundation only let them use the footage that once? Don't know.
 
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I've started re-watching it again, not from the first series but from the third, don't really know why!

There was a bit during the review of the Holden Monaro a Rolf Harris song played.

all the Episodes are there for between 8-11 months.
 
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Is the Greatest Car segment still in? And have there been any music changes like you'd find on Dave?

I'm also surprised Series 23 is available. :lol:

Samus
I don't think they ever did show S9E1 either, no.
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Nope, that episode was buried as soon as it was shown; it wasn't included in the BBC Worldwide library so it was never repeated, anywhere. The only place I can imagine it being available other than BBC iPlayer is MotorTrend. I think the attitude towards the episode changed when the crash was shown at the 'end' of The Grand Tour.
 
S9E1 got the then-usual repeats on BBC TWO and Three in the week that followed the original broadcast and one final showing nearly a month later. Otherwise it never appeared again on any BBC TV or UKTV channel.
 
Samus
Yes that segment is there, he even reads out the numbers with no notice on screen for idiots who think it's still active, although I assume the phone lines are dead now.
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Amazing, I guess the work of that project to find it doesn't need to exist now!
 

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