My Anglophllic guilty pleasure among many (thanks PBS) was watching BBC-America's Top Gear despite its infantile and occasionally misogynist foolishness. I came to it very late because I didn’t always have access to that channel yet it did show some of the kinds of cars not possible to ever own or in some cases even see in the US. It did need to change and it has when the eldest presenter decided to get himself fired by punching-out his Irish producer, and now the presenter-trio that made it more interesting than other tv car shows primarily because of their 3-Stooge antics has moved onto the Amazon platform. Not so much an acquired taste as a minor amusement simply waiting for the next trainwreck with occasionally sometimes trenchant, Britain-specific jokes by Yorkshiremen about the English ruling classes.
Top Gear on BBC-America will debut soon but since I cannot afford that channel anymore, I won’t see how the new hosts are more diverse and do represent a more Millenial audience approach by the channel. No comment on how dismal the US version of Top Gear is on the History(sic) Channel aka the Pawnshop-Ice Trucker Network.
OTOH, my interest in performance cars never really got fulfilled unilke my sister, who owned all kinds of amusing cars, all over 400hp — Corvettes, Chevelles, El Caminos. for me it was all kinds of more practical cars like a series of mundane pickups, vans, and sub-compacts. If fortunes change I will get an EV or as I have written before something weirder like an Elio 3-wheeler, although I’d really like something like this Fiat 600 with a Mazda rotary engine.
Amazon’s new motoring show starring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will be called The Grand Tour.
In a statement, the former Top Gear trio thanked fans for taking the time to send in their suggestions for the name, which they said were “much appreciated”.
“Thing is,” said Clarkson, “we’ll be travelling the world hosting each episode in a different country, from a giant tent. It’s a sort of ‘grand tour’, if you like. So we’ve decided to call it The Grand Tour.”
May said he was underwhelmed by the name. “I wanted to call it ‘Nigel’, or ‘Roger’,” he said. “We needed a name, and they’re names.”
Hammond was more positive. “I already love camping,” he said. “But this is something else. We are like our pioneering and prospecting forebears, sallying forth into a new frontier of broadcasting, and making our home where…”
Early reports had suggested the show might be called Gear Knobs, but in April Clarkson claimed the BBC had a legal right to stop the new show using the word “gear” in the title.
The name the trio chose fits with their ambition to do something different to the BBC series, moving further away from the traditional car show format with studio segments and big set-pieces.
The Grand Tour is set to debut this autumn on Amazon’s video service. It is not yet clear whether all the episodes will be released in one go, as Amazon and rival Netflix have done with many of their drama series, or follow a more traditional scheduled pattern, though May has previously said it is likely to be the latter.
Amazon is paying £160m for three series of the show, which is being made by a production company set up by the three former Top Gear presenters and long-time producer Andy Wilman called W Chump & Sons.
On the other side of Anglophilia, I like that the Turner Prize goes to artwork that looks unlike Turner’s work, but much like British cars, it is always about absences like the quality of British automobile electrical systems.
The painting they are viewing is a Turner that does evoke the transition from sail to steam among other things including the death of Nelson. And the Aston-Martin DB-5’s machine guns finally got used effectively in that movie.
The Turner prize, established in 1984, has been won by artists including Gilbert & George, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst and last year the design and architecture collective Assemble.
The prize’s stated aim is to “promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art” rewarding British artists under 50 deemed to have made outstanding work over the preceding year.
Josephine Pryde is shortlisted for her show at CCA Wattis, San Francisco, called lapses in Thinking By the person i Am.
Northumberland-born Pryde is fascinated by the relationship between art and photography and for her California show she installed a 1:10 scale model of a Union Pacific freight locomotive which pulled two boxcars which visitors could ride as they looked at Pryde’s photographs of a woman’s hands.
SO DO YOU HAVE A CULTURE OUTSIDE YOUR OWN THAT YOU LIKE ENOUGH TO BE CALLED A _____PHILE?
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