This past week, American TV critics tipped a bath of tepid water over the US series of Kath & Kim. Is anyone surprised by that? I know I’m not.
Translating a show like K&K was always going to be tough. We all recognise its very Australian brand of bad taste – call it a national in-joke. But if you extract that Australianness and replace it with the American equivalent, it’s hardly surprising that the humour gets lost in translation. It raises the question of adapting successful TV shows for new markets.
K&K didn’t work, but the bar is arguably lower for a show about cars. Cars are at least as ubiquitous as bogans, and perhaps more importantly, the male response to them is almost universal. Even the response of people who don’t care about cars (e.g., me) to a show like Top Gear is predictable – if it’s good, we’ll watch it.
Although the original Top Gear is a British product hosted by three Brits and filmed mostly in Britain, there isn’t anything screamingly British about the content or the format. That makes adapting it for a car loving nation like Australia easier, if not easy.
So, settling in to watch the premier of the local series last night, I was most interested in how the producers tweaked the DNA of the original to make an “Australian” product, and I got the answer within moments. They didn’t. Not even slightly. Other than the hosts, Top Gear Australia is identical to the original. Straight outta the box. The thinking seems to be, when you’ve got a winning formula, why change it?
For that reason, the show looked good. The photography was characteristically slick. There were no flat spots. There was a Porsche and a Lamborghini and some soft-roaders being treated with entertaining disrespect. Our very own Stig, dressed the same, similarly mute, but mildly disappointing: if there was an opportunity to add an Australian twist, surely it was here. There was a special guest doing a hot lap and a magnetic board for the times. A half-arsed news segment. Warren Brown’s attack on the luxury car tax added nothing. Clever, though, to air the Ford v Holden showdown in week two. That’ll get a few return viewers. Though I’ve seen it all before on the UK version, I’ve enjoyed it and so, on those grounds, I shouldn’t complain.
The one obvious difference is the hosts, which is the one thing they couldn’t reproduce. And this is where things skidded off the road. Charlie Cox is not Jeremy Clarkson, not even close. Doesn’t have the wit. And at one point instead of saying “shit” he said “poop”. Quaint and more than a bit grandmotherly. Steve Pizzati has the frenetic energy of Frank Woodley but, sadly, not the humour, and Warren Brown doesn’t know the first thing about cars; looking at him behind the wheel last night, it might have been the first time he’s driven one. As a trio of car luvvin’ blokes there to entertain, they did their job, but it was unnatural and strained. I don’t doubt they’ll improve as they show ages.
Overall though, Top Gear Australia kept me interested for the hour. What about you? Should the producers have put a more Australian stamp on it? Or are you satisfied with the imported product, re-badged with some Australian hosts?
And most importantly, will you watch it?
4 Comments
I watched it and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. There were a few chuckles. You’re right though, the host is no Clarkson (no matter how hard he tries), that young bloke needs a shave and the other guy looked totally out of his depth, that luxury car tax rant was stupid and misinformed. Having said all that, I’ll continue to watch.
I’ll give it some time, but (as a big fan of the original) I was not that impressed. Copying the format and audio/visual style of the original so closely is not necessarily a bad idea, but it does tend to highlight areas where the Oz version just doesn’t match up – particularly in the scripting and presentation, and the action camera work.
Cox and Pizatti will probably be ok if they loosen up and don’t try to copy Clarkson and Hammond, but Warren Brown is really not suited to this. He just looks completely ordinary and with no special insight (and I hope they are not going to work a cartoon into every show!).
The track needs a facelift and they really need to choose their camera positions and/or the track layout a bit better so you can actually see the interesting bits (like the corner exits). This will hopefully improve with time, as it did with the original – although the UK version didn’t have to compare with a much slicker existing show like the new Oz one does…
Definitely agree with Mike on this.
The UK Top Gear as we know it in Oz was the second iteration of the show. The ’80s-’90s version was shockingly boring with none of the silliness and track action that we’ve grown to enjoy (and makes my wife laugh more than anything in the world). When it started up again in the new format 5 or so years ago its radical new approach was really exciting … but just as old comedy shows get dated so have the early shows from the new style Top Gear. In 2003 the photography wasn’t as stunning, the presenters (especially James May) were nowhere near as slick as they appear to be now, but it didn’t matter because it was all new.
It makes me wonder, did SBS intentionally start showing those old shows in the weeks coming up to the launch of TG Australia in order to set a lower standard for us to compare, or maybe a more realistic standard?
The whole idea of Warren getting into a scrape every week is going to be tedious and contrived if it continues. The shark scene was a complete waste of money. It was disappointing to listen to Warren claim that being Australian was going to make the show better, but then not manage to create any kind of suspense or excitement. I thought in this kind of TV we were supposed to feel sympathy for the presenter – I reckon most of us were hoping he’d get his head bitten off!
The stupid attempts to drive in the snow and extract the car when it got stuck might have been staged by the UK show to make the presenters look idiotic, but in this case it just looked dumb. Doesn’t everyone know to get some weight on the spinning wheels?
When Clarkson interviews a ’star’ they seem to have a good conversation. Vince Colosimo was a good guest, but almost too good – his experience in front of a camera made Cox look amateur.
As for the track? The airfield more like! Granted, you wouldn’t expect them to have purchased their own track, but some corners that aren’t made out of cones would definitely improve things.
I did think that there was an increased level of technical information compared to the UK version. And that’s a good thing. I find Clarkson’s dismissal of any kind of useful information beyond 0-60 information and horsepower embarassing.
I’ll be back next week, though, hoping that things will improve with time.
I don’t watch much on the ol’ tube (too busy reading) but I have to say, when I heard about the US Kath and Kim I was absolutely baffled. I’m not AT ALL surprised it didn’t fly.
I watched one episode of Brit Top Gear to see what all the fuss was about but cars are even more not my thing than TV. But if they are – I could tell it’d be pretty entertaining! Hope the Aussie one pleases you fans.