Top gear 27

[norbs]

Jesus, the 2 new blokes....

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[Big Kev]

Generally seems to be getting favourable reviews over here. I recorded it so I didn't waste an hour of my life if it was cack.

[norbs]

Probably the jarring accents.

I know of Flintoff. No idea about the other bloke.

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[Big Kev]

He's basically a friend of comedian Peter Kaye (standup, Phoenix Nights, Carshare) and I think they did the writing of some of Kaye's comedies together (similar situation to Nick Frost and Simon Pegg I think) and then they wrote one for themselves called Max and Paddy (a spin off of 2 characters in Phoenix Nights) and he became popular from that and then did a bit of TV presenting because he's one of those people who can just make stuff up as he goes. Not sure what his car history is like. He's not a motoring journo but he's obviously made plenty of money from his TV work to afford astons and the like but he's there just for 'comedy' value and maybe some script writing I guess.

[DarrenM]

I enjoyed it. Couldn't get into the previous trio but I'll be watching more of these. Still feels like they're trying to follow the formula too closely though. Hopefully they at least come up with their own running gags. Harris running into Flintoff just made me roll my eyes.

I've liked Flintoff's other shows. Other guy seems alright if a bit shouty. He's familiar but I can't remember what I've seen him on. IMDB says he was on shooting stars and 8 out of 10 cats so it might be from there.

[pixelboy]

Ninja Warrior?

[DarrenM]

For Flintoff I liked his documentary/travel type shows. Lord of the Fries etc. Wouldn't go out of my way to download them, but would watch when they were on tv. Didn't know he was on Ninja Warrior. Paddy is the one that's familiar but I can't place.

[durbster]

I wasn't sure about this so it was a nice surprise to find myself laughing quite a lot through it

It was a good one to start with, with a well judged theme and utterly epic cinematography. The studio stuff is still a bit cringey, and it remains to be seen how they are on the more humble jaunts. I'll be watching though.

Paddy used to do stand-up comedy too and I went to see him once. My brother enjoyed it but I found his stuff a bit old fashioned.

[thornz]

I am enjoying bits of this season, hit or miss, but much better than I was expecting.

One thing that irks me a bit (and maybe I'm getting old and grumpy), is the borderline bullying of Chris Harris? Some of it seems in good humour, but some of it seems to cross the line a bit? In the episode with the herse, when they pull his stuff out of his car was all good, but when the stuff him into the coffin compartment, and then after all that flintoff slams the watermelon onto his head, I thought that maybe went a bit far?

Probably doesnt help that Harris probably doesnt fit in with the 'lad' culture of the other two either.

[durbster]

I enjoyed the whole series. I did feel uncomfortable where I thought Flintoff crossed the line into just outright cruelty and there was a bit of fuss about that, but Harris insisted it wasn't as bad as it came across and he was having a ball.

Here's a nice little addendum to the Lotus film:

[Big Kev]

I've liked this series more than I thought I would. I watched it on catch up so I could skip the celebrity interview (although I did watch Bob Mortimer who was good), and I skipped some parts of some of the 'challenges' as I thought they were a bit overly long (there's only so much driving across a desert or through a forest that you can fill time with). I agree about some of the teasing of Harris, it was as though the new guys were ganging up on the older shorter one but as mentioned, Harris said he was ok with it but it seemed to go a little far at times.

Hopefully next series they will have gelled a bit more and they'll find some better challenges to do. They all felt a bit like we'd seen them before with Clarkson et al.

[Big Kev]

German racing driver Sabine Schmitz, best known for her recurring role in BBC's Top Gear has revealed that she is battling cancer.

"Since the end of 2017, I have been fighting an extremely stubborn cancer that could not be made out with the previous means. It got a little better – but now he came back with full force.

"Now I have to pull out all the stops and force to master the next therapies vigorously in the hope that something will work.