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'Top Gear': Ten Years, Mostly Accident Free
The problem with American shows about cars is that they're so enthusiastic. They're all, "Ooo, look at my fast car, isn't it pretty, and here's the list of the show's sponsors who will sell you enough spare parts to ensure you'll spend weekend after weekend in your garage, covered in grease and utterly miserable."
Thank the BBC for the grand British institution that is Top Gear, whose tenth season is now on DVD (BBC Warner, $39.98). It's less a car show, more an excuse for three overgrown schoolboys to drive fast enough to scare themselves and then mock each other. There's Jeremy Clarkson (the tall, sardonic one), Richard Hammond (the short, enthusiastic one) and James May (better known as Captain Slow, a man that could get lost on a circular track.) They are unified by their fearless dedication to fast cars and comfortable slacks. Oh, and their seething hatred of Volkswagen Beetles.
It's officially an institution. Now in its twelfth season in the UK, that means it's run longer than Monty Python's Flying Circus. And, whisper it quietly, but it's arguably a lot funnier. Although that's not always deliberate: After all three hosts spending a sweltering week driving uncomfortable super cars around the wrong bits of Europe, Clarkson proudly proclaims, "Top Gear: Ambitious, but rubbish!"
Who can blame them? Great Britain is, after all, the country where gas goes at around $6.55 a gallon, so quit your kvetching next time it break three bucks: Although, as Hammond points out, even at UK pump prices, it's still a fraction of the cost of a comparable volume of bull semen.
This is car porn of the weirdest kind: Although the cinematography is gorgeous, hearing a Honda Civic Type R described as having a dashboard from the Romulans, door handles from a 1950's fridge, and an engine as eager as a pensioner's terrier can sometimes leave you confused as to whether they like the car or not.
That said, what's not to love about a show that compares trunk capacity on the basis of how much cheese you can fit in there.
But it's the daring challenges that make this show a true joy. And when we say "daring" what we actually mean is "bloody stupid, generally involving swearing, broken suspension, and the occasional fire." Nothing more aptly sums up this fearless devotion to the idiotic than the amphibious car challenge, which is worth the price tag for this three-disc set by itself. It's one of those challenges invented on a drunken night: Convert a normal used car into something that can drive to the water, and then sail across it. Actually, this is the second time they've done this: Back in season 8, they failed to make it across a reservoir. This time, they try to get across the English channel – the world's busiest shipping lane. But this is a show presented by men who believe that strapping an outboard motor to the back of a pick-up and welding the doors shut makes a seaworthy vessel.
All in all, if you've ever dreamed of a show were three slightly balding men somehow manage to drive across the entire width of Botswana in used cars with no suspension and leaky batteries, just to annoy spoiled idiots who think they need four-wheel drive to pick the kids up from school, there's another nine seasons to pick up.
Kimberley Jones, Thu Jun 25
The World Horror Convention touches down in Austin in 2011
