You wouldn’t think that BBC America (DISH Network 135, various times) would be home to one of the fastest-growing cult car shows around, but then… this is cable.
Top Gear (self-description: “The best in vehicular chaos, fast celebrities, and top gear jackassery”) is hosted by If you’d like tickets to the studio audience, they’re free—but there’s also a waiting list of over twenty years.
Part car-talk show, part racing homage, part Jackass, and part comedy series, Top Gear is brimming with the same dry, off-the-wall Brit humor that marks Monty Python. Hosts Jeremy Clarkson and James May, both broadcasters, do their best to make the show accessible to non-car enthusiasts.
The footage is gorgeous and so is the scenery, and the program occasionally films in London for such delights as a fast car in rush hour traffic racing against a fast human running without a red light to hinder him (the human won.) Another episode pitted tractor-trailers against one another --“lorries,” to use the proper terminology from the show--and included built-in dangers: One truck was hauling a wedding cake, and another was stocked with hay on one end and a heater on the other. (This, predictably, resulted in my two young nephews running around in circles and shrieking. The two-year-old had a particularly fine commentary to offer: Laying a small hand on my leg, he said urgently, “Truck on fire!”) It’s fun for the whole family, this one.
Top Gear has already won an International Emmy and quite the fan base. It’s by no means an everyday car homage, and those with a Brit-friendly sense of humor will pass a pleasant hour.
