You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me....

Top Gear US?  Pardon my casual language, but WTF?  How can you have Top Gear without Jeremy Clarkson?  Without James May?  Without Richard Hammond?  And don't even tell me they've got an American Stig.  Somehow, just the thought of that makes me...twitch. 

Not everything translates.  Some of the joy of that show is in the wonderfully sarcastic and dry British humor of the show.  Much of it is in the interplay of personalities of the hosts.  I don't believe that you can just transplant that to a different network in a different country and get the same results just because you're going to be testing impossible cars. 

Sure, lots of US viewers probably won't know the difference. It's happened before.  There was the US version of Touching Evil.  The Office started in the UK, too.  Most US viewers might know Monty Python, and, if they're really on it, Are You Being Served, Absolutely Fabulous, or Fawlty Towers.  It's a shame more British shows aren't known here.  There are Keeping Up Appearances, Vicar of Dibley, Wire in the Blood, Hex, Being Human, and my personal and perennial favorite, Dr. Who.

I wish people would watch these in their "native form" rather than feel as though they have to alter them.  I don't know why we do that.  Other countries pretty much have to watch whatever we send them; why don't we try to expand our horizons some, too?  It's not like they're going to be speaking another language or something (although, really, even if they were...would a subtitle kill you?  I mean...really?), and as everybody knows, a remake is almost never even as good as the original, much less surpassing it. 

I will probably check out the new US version just to give it a chance, but I'm not expecting anything.  I don't see how they can have episodes as epic as the guys' camping trip last week with the homemade travel trailers or the convertible people carriers or the tractor races.  I'll keep mine with the Union Jack flying behind it if it's all the same to you.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for that accent.