Jumping The Shark: American Top Gear On The Way

BBC America announced that they are finally going to take the plunge and give an American version of the popular Top Gear television series a try complete with American hosts. Comedian Adam Ferrara, racing analyst Rutledge Wood and stunt driver Tanner Foust will host the show, which will air on the History Channel starting this fall.



BBC America announced that they are finally going to take the plunge and give an American version of the popular Top Gear television series a try complete with American hosts. Comedian Adam Ferrara, racing analyst Rutledge Wood and stunt driver Tanner Foust will host the show, which will air on the History Channel starting this fall.
The channel, part of the A&E network, has commissioned 10 episodes from BBC Worldwide, the BBC’s commercial arm. BBC Worldwide’s Jane Tranter said the US program would be both similar and different to its UK counterpart which has a huge audience here in the US.

“Top Gear has been one of the BBC’s most successful formats globally and we are delighted to be partnering with History on a version for the US,” she said. “Together we have worked to tailor the format for the American audience, while staying true to the original dynamic that fans across the world have come to love.”

BBC America says they do not know whether there will be any crossover with the UK program.

This is the crux of the issue in our opinion. Top Gear has become enormously popular in America for a few key reasons. First off, the format is built upon the foundation of dry English humor and wit, something that will be very difficult to recreate in America. Top Gear hosts Richard Hammond, Jeremy Clarkson and James May are well loved personalities who have a natural chemistry that conveys to the audience. And while most American television shows are engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator, Top Gear appeals to a level of intellect that is rarely fed in American reporting and entertainment.

Secondly, the show exposes American audiences to a raft of cool cars from around the world that we don’t get to see every day, adding an allure to the show that again will likely be left out of an American version. While Jeremy Clarkson often angers some Americans by crapping all over some of our cars like the Mustang and the Corvette, his wit and humor is hard not to watch.

But for whatever reason, BBC has been bent on creating a US only version of the show. In 2008, they had  planned to launch it once before with NBC. But even car and TV guru Jay Leno questioned the wisdom of the project saying he was worried the show would be “impossible to recreate” in America.

“I don’t think you could be quite as freewheeling with your opinions as you can on the BBC, because sponsors pay for the programs,” he wrote in The Times. “If Kia was our sponsor this week, we’d have to say the car was fantastic.”

Although some pilot segments were filmed with hosts Adam Carolla, Tanner Foust and Eric Stromer in 2008, the series never made it to air. But who knows. Maybe Leno is wrong and the gut instincts of most Americans are as well. Perhaps we are ready for a fattened up, watered down and gentrified Top Gear….. dumbed down just for stupid Americans. The least we can hope for is that the British version of Top Gear is not pulled while they run this little experiment on us.