The Grand Tour (from the guys in Top Gear)

Evans and LeBlanc going all "omg i cannot believe we made it after all these hardships!" felt really off considering they went from London to Blackpool...At least the original 3 only said that after days of driving through some godforsaken hellhole suffering multiple breakdowns.

It all felt really forced and fake...and there was too much of the original shows ideas left... It all felt like if they switched Ian McKellan as Gandalf halfway through the return of the king. everything they did reminded you of the original 3, the theme song, the stig the star in a reasonably priced car, although that had a nice little change, but it was always the time for me to fastforward because that segment is something i could have always done without.

Leblanc has the charisma of a pile of bricks, and i think they just use him as the dumb american, especially after Clarkson constantly referred to americans as dumbasses and fat idiots (no offense) But for the British having a good laugh because LeBlanc has no clue where blackpool is, that gives the brits something to laugh about.

Horrible. There's no salvaging this. FACT.

I watched part of the 2nd ep and turned it off. JC must be rather happy with himself right now.

Who in the hell picked these hosts? They all suck goats.

This cracks me up:
Chris Evans on Twitter:

2nd ep did worse in the ratings than a rerun of Antiques Roadshow.

FACT.

It's certainly not as good as old TG, but if I weren't comparing it to that, and just as it's own thing, I think it'd be fine.

I still don't understand why they don't make Sabine and Rory a bigger part of the show. I guess they decided to roll with this whole UK vs USA thing between Evans and LeBlanc, but they need more personalities to play off of to increase the humor.

BBC has had iconic presenters leave to drama/scandal before. They are big shoes to fill if the show is only successful because of the big personality.

Their go to response is "guest presenter", you have a different person replacing them each week. This sometimes allows them to get someone more famous or memorable whom wouldn't commit to a full season. The third presenter seems to be a half baked version of this and I wouldn't be surprised if next season they have the celebrity guests on challenges instead of the part timers.

Their other response if the format is strong is to hire an unknown and develop a new personality. So you may get one of those black guys from that Extra Gear show no one watches.

Anyway there's very little chemistry at the moment, Jenson Button and Sabine making people ill with their expert driving and Leblac telling off Eddie Jordan were the only good bits in 2 episodes.

Well, that already happened in episode 2. They had Seasick Steve, Tinie Tempah, Eddie Jordan and Shirleen (?, the scottish chick) all on that south african adventure.
I figured that's why they are doing multiple celebrities per episode in the 'reasonably priced rally car', to remove some of the burden from Leblanc/Evans and change up the format a bit. The thing is, they need more comedians/funny people in general on the show. The humor was what made the original Top Gear so great, and that's lacking a bit right now. Other then that, I honestly don't hate the new version. Its got LOADS of improvement to go before it's as good as the original, and I'm sure I'll always prefer 'Grand Tour' to this when it launches, but I am rooting for them to make it work at least.

Yeah they need more people there. The 45 minute in studio segment of Evans awkwardly trying to hype up the crowd over whose old car was better was a real highlight.


Holy fuck that part was brutal. Any momentum they had from the challenge bit was fucking mauled by that. It felt like it went on for a week.

The last episode had the lowest UK viewers since 2002.

The whole thing was pretty lose/lose for BBC, they were boned either way. The three stooges, and especially Amazon, won big time.

That segment interviewing the guests is tedious.

They thought it would be a better idea to make that go even longer = yawn.

Total side-note here: McLaren should work on giving their different car models a different look. Just a thought.

Same could be said of Lamborghini and Porsche

Fadaar_sl said:

Same could be said of Lamborghini and Porsche

Click to expand...

Agreed on Lambos, but not on Porsches. They only have a handful of models, and they're extremely easy to tell apart.

Eh true, they do have a decently varied lineup. Guess I'm just more stuck on how boring the 911 has always looked. Purely my opinion of course.

Top Gear falls to 2.4m from last week's 2.8 and 4.3m launch. Believed to be lowest ever overnight audience for BBC2 show
John Plunkett -
@johnplunkett149
Broadcasting correspondent for the Guardian

The more I hear Evan's voice, it just grates on me. High pitched nasal ginger that gets car sick hosting Top Gear? Is it a joke?

Man.. the more I see of the Extra Gear guys, I really don't understand why they aren't part of the show. The black guy has way more on screen charisma then Chris Evans does, imo. When I heard all the rumors about who they were casting to be part of this show, I thought a larger, ensemble style cast made sense. I can't understand for the life of me why they thought they should make separate, mini-shows, when they needed to make sure the main product came back strong after this big change. Making a secondary add-on show would have made sense 3-5 years ago during Top Gear's peak, but that's just diluting the brand now.

I still don't hate the main show, but it's frustrating seeing how much better it could be if they just combined all 4 guys into one show. Let them do the challenges together and build some chemistry, rather then a rotating cast of new celebrities each week.