They've flat out denied many times the races are filmed over 'a number of weeks' or are fixed or staged in any significant way. They say the races are done 'for real' and then they go back for a day or two to do some of the other shots required to make it look nice afterwards. TG may be a show with a big budget but they really can't afford to have whole crews and expensive supercars away in places like the south of France filming for weeks on end.

Some of the challenges certainly are filmed over extended periods - you can't do some of the things they do to cars in a couple of hours.

As for the news being scripted - I have a feeling what happens is they chat about the news in the office and then when it comes time to film the show they try to remember what they said that was funny, which then gets put into a script of sorts. That plus the need to possibly do several takes of it anyway could certainly lead to a rather wooden delivery. If you want it to be smooth you'd have to get proper actors to host the show and after the impression some of them have made in the SIARPC, I rather think that idea when by the wayside very early.

Jon

OK, this is how it works. It's not meant to be educational. It's an entertainment programme themed around cars, with 3 middle aged men dicking about.

That's it.

Many dozens of people around the world enjoy the show and that's all that matters. If you don't like it don't watch it.

By the way, I realised this morning that I have started listening to radio 4 on the way to work and back home, and I also have grey hairs... in my beard! I have also realised that pay day should be renamed spend all your pay on bills day, and I was just looking for an excuse to have a little rant.

Little rant over.

The repeat is about to start on BBC3

And I'm off to meet friends for dinner...

Doh! It's the week before lasts.

This weeks repeat is on BBC2 at 9pm.

Just watched the latest episode, and unless they're seriously holding back for future shows, the budget must be well down on previous years - this is, what, the third episode in this series? And it's all been kinda boring comparatively IMO

The scripted arguments are really getting to me I have to say, not to mention the staged 'incidents' like tonight with the army

Yeah, live ammo, except they didn't fire at him while he was in the car etc. Just like he wasn't in it when they crushed it.

I wasn't too impressed with this episode either. Compared to the Vietnam episode on Dave earlier this afternoon, this was appalling.

Peter.

Last week when a transport plane went past at the exact same time May and the Subaru driver were racing the dirtbike bloke, I wondered was it CGI, because that would require some rather spectacular staging

TBH I thought tonight's was the weakest so far. The Focus & Renault aren't mad enough to be interesting, they're just hot hatches. James and Richard's 'race' was actually fairly interesting but the direction was rather flat and it was never really tense at all. And tbh I can't really see who the panamera is aimed at; the people who want a porsche sports car will buy a Boxter or a 911, the peopel who want a fast capacious family car will buy of the fast estates that BMW and Audi do. I don't know how many Quattroporti get sold every year but I'm thinking it's not a lot really. The bit with Clarkson mucking about with the army was patently meant to be funny but wasn't, and was too close to a rehash of the thing he did a couple of seasons ago with the Range Rover. When they said 'new toys' I was expecting remote drones, smart weapons and Apache helicopters, not armoured bulldozers and off road vans.


I still don't think they're scripted per se, I think they just bicker a lot. o However the thing with the army was obviously staged though - it was patently more of an army PR exercise than any sort of real challenge. Much like the famed Lotus/Apache shootout, if they'd wanted to take him out they could have just got to high ground and done it from range. However there is a certain sort of petrol head who likes big army trucks and amphibious vehicles and what have you, so I suppose for them it made good telly.

As I say, I thought this one was quite weak compared to the first three which had set quite a decent standard.

Jon

I'm fairly certain that was a composite shot if not actually CGI. For one thing I can't imagine anyone letting them kick up that much dust & gravel that close to a runway when there were planes taking off; suck a load of that into your engine at takeoff and the consequences could be messy.

Jon

^ I thought it was just an army PR job too

Yip, I'd rather do without the Michael Bay stuff during what used to be a genuinely exciting section previously

Poor Evo...

It was done from a couple of angles.

I have to agree that this episode was a bit flat.

The Evo vs Army feature did nothing for me, apart from raise the odd smile at the thought that a drug dealer might have seen his car decapitated and shot at. But then, maybe he was from Essex...