TV | Top Gear (Series 23) | Liked It-ish

First the good; Harris isn't terrible. His enthusiasm is contagious, even if he's a rich guy with rich toys that has nothing to do with the real world. He owns a McLaren 675LT, fer gawdsakes. But that's been my main complaint about this show for how many years...?

Now the bad; LeBlanc doesn't belong anywhere near this show. He just doesn't fit. He wouldn't even fit in the US Top Gear. The rest of the cast is okay; probably not enough Schmitz, tho. But worse than the cast is the show itself. It's the same old, super highly produced airy piece of flotsam that it's been for far too long. The stunts are boring, the challenges stupid and the overall premise smacks once again of, "Let's take advantage of our budget and drive a bunch of ridiculous cars around in silly fashion to absolutely no point but not try to be creative in any way because we only know how to beat a dead horse!" The 90 minute format is faaaaaarrrrr too long; it should have been 60 at most. They just can't keep things interesting enough for that long with snappy cinematography and what used to be good music. Somehow, they lost that plot line, too.

I don't miss the original three. That's not a factor for me. Well, with maybe the possible exception of The Hamster. But the other two...nope.

I'm sticking with my original statement; they should have killed this show and replaced it with a different concept entirely. It's tired, it's done and smells like a rotting corpse...terrible.

And yet...there are still cars involved, so I'll probably continue to watch it, skipping the copious boring spots. Most of it, actually.

Sigh.