Andy Wilman is the producer of and writer for Top Gear. You probably haven't heard of him because he typically stays behind the scenes (I would love to throw a bucket of shit over him), but it's largely him and not Clarkson, May or Hammond that we have to thank for the show being so CRAP and un-connected to Cars!
Who does this guy think he is? He has ruined my favourite TV show, put loads of stupid looking people in the audience that are told to laugh!
This guy is responsible - SACK HIM!
Wilman admits than no-one has been especially happy with the latest series of Top Gear, apparently because it has all been rather rushed.
And he acknowledges viewer and fan complaints that it’s all become rather formulaic and James May and Richard Hammond too cartoonish and an annoying pair that should be sacked!
To be honest I hardly watch Top Gear any more. It became jaded and self-satisfied at least two series ago. So much so that I stopped watching it, and if don’t tick every demographic box then I don’t know who does.
I dipped a toe back in a few weeks ago and quite enjoyed Clarkson’s Twingo road test and was grateful for some stuff on the big SUVs. There was some other stuff on it but it was so dull I can’t even remember what it was.
Top Gear’s greatest problem has always been its ubiquity. You can’t escape the three presenters or repeats on BBC2 or Dave. And we all know what familiarity breeds.
There are other niggling problems. Clarkson’s casual yet tiresome politicised asides; his predictable bait-and-switch reviews; the spots with the British Army that are vaguely jingoistic; the scripted moments that jump out as exactly that; and the tedious and sycophantic interviews.
But the recurring one is the three presenters themselves. Wilman acknowledges that viewers want their ‘three mates’ back, rather than the tiresome caricatures they’ve become.
‘…Jezza the walking nuclear bomb, Richard the daft Norman Wisdom, and James the bumbling professor,’ as Wilman has it.
From what I saw of it Season 14 of Top Gear was nearer Last of the Summer Wine than anything else.
Just as a tin bath would inevitably end up tumbling down a hill with our three heroes snugly inside, any car on a public road in Top Gear will end up embarrassingly stalled in traffic at rush hour, with all three mugging and ‘cock’ing at the absurdity of it all.
Another annoyance of recent times about Top Gear’s is Clarkson’s repeated insistence that the show won’t return. Wilman offers his own version of that empty threat, although coming from the series producer I expect it carries rather more weight.
So, is that a none-too-subtle suggestion that the end is nigh? It certainly wouldn’t do Top Gear any harm to have a sabbatical, or even exist from now on as an infrequent visitor to TV schedules.
I expect the financial imperatives driving the series make than unlikely in the here-and-now, but it’s a nice idea.
Wilman acknowledges, and fair play to him for doing so, that the threat of over-familiarity is a big problem in these autumn days of the show. But there’s not a lot to suggest that’s going to change.
All of which is probably cold comfort for anyone wanting more stuff that’s actually about cars, rather than about Jezza, Hamster and Captain Slow – the presenters’ shagged-out and thoroughly over-exposed alter egos.
Strap yourself in for a couple more years of diminishing returns.
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