It has become apparent on our humble site that the second episode of Top Gear was received a little more positively than the first by those who watched it, which is good news. However, it appears that the first episode has not been well-enough received to entice its record-breaking audience back, second time around.
Top Gear’s producers had hoped to crack the one million viewer mark with last night’s episode, but only managed 674,000. That’s 250,000 down on the previous week and only enough to see Top Gear Oz rank as the 26th most watched show of the night.
In fact, it finished dead last in its time slot, against the likes of Australian Idol, Border Security and the 7:30 Report.
Matt Campbell, SBS director of television has admitted that the result is disappointing, but not a disaster, with many shows having their ups and downs before finding their feet.
“No one ever wants to see their second episode go backwards but I’m still confident about the series,” Campbell said.
“We have to bed it in, it’s one of those things.”
A second season of Top Gear Australia is at this stage still on the cards.
Lets hope the rough edges can be knocked off and the Oz series can find its own identity and style, in time to attract the sort of audiences that will ensure its ongoing success. A quick flick around sites like TMR will give the Top Gear producers a good idea of what viewers - car enthusiasts - are looking for and where improvements might be made.
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The problem is that people expected this to be as good as the UK version and weren’t willing to give it a good chance. There was no hope in hell that TG-Aus would be as good as the UK, but compare the first two pisodes with ‘Vintage’ Top Gear, and you will see that they are very similar. Just let this show develop and grow, it will come good if it is given a chance.
I agree. Lets just all give it a go and a chance to iron out the little foibles. Can’t get any worse.
I also agree. It needs to be given the time it needs to get everything right, TGUK has been at it for years!
The guys are a bit nervous but will improve with time.
I think it is important for Australia to have a decent motoring show. I think this is better than other attempts. Stick with it SBS.
I think there are only minor improvements to make, overall it’s not that bad, and certainly no where near as bad as some are saying around on different sites.
It will get better I’m sure of it, I just hope SBS doesn’t get cold feet and dump it too early.
Top Gear Uk Is built around the cars and the hosts, The 3 Hosts of the Australian Version are not good tv talent I lasted 20 mins into the first show and over the years i have seen some bad tv plus the cars have the ability to only travel at 110kph on the Aussie road not like the European roads.
You guys are just being polite. It’s not a fair comparison saying that the first eps of TG UK were crap, therefore it’s OK for the first eps of TG Aus to be crap. You are comparing two things that are not the same. Considering that TG Aus is a knock-off of TG UK, I would expect it to be lot better given the considerable head start TG UK has given it - the brand, the format, the ethos, the ideas, etc…
I’m happy to give a fresh new Aussie show about cars plenty of leeway to get on its feet, but not TG Aus. It should be a heck of a lot better than this.
By comparing the two together, I wasn’t looking for an excuse, I was giving a comparison of our three new blokes with the new James May and new(ish) Hammond. Look at the way they discuss things in their early episodes and you will see it is similar to how our boys are doing it now simply because they were a new group which was still getting to know each other and build what they have today.
Having already got most of the basic ideas of the show from the Poms doesn’t make the job any easier. Firstly, you can’t just take everything that TG-UK had, slap on a few new blokes with some slang and call it Australian. They need to create a unique feel to it which is so distinct in the UK version. Secondly, the hosts need to work with each other more and come across alot more natural than they do now; and for three guys with very little Television experience (Cox had commentry but nothing like this), this will take a little bit of time.
If you want a show like this to work, it needs to be given time - something the Poms have had plenty of with Top Gear.
My full review is at http://www.mavetju.org/weblog/html/00259.html, but here is the important part:
So what is the initial verdict? Quite some people I spoke were negative about it, but I blame that mostly on expectation: If they expected one-on-one copies of the characters of Clarkson, Hammond and May, they had woken up with a cold shower. The scenery in the shots so far are okay, hopefully they will show all parts of Australia (desert, rainforest, mountains, coastal roads, wetlands etc). The two car challenges (Sand and Snow in one day and Utes at the gold mining pits) and two hacking challenges (Shark Cage and Smart Funeral car) were surely with the same chaos and quality of the original Top Gear. The run-around-the-track is still boring and I haven’t recognized any of the celebrities yet (but I blame that fully on myself and not on the show
I will keep watching this show through the first season and hope that it will give me the same laughs and warm feelings of the original Top Gear!