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Comment by JakDrako | Hacker News Reader

Some say that he can make a brick fly using only a banana and a pair of socks and that he's been known to reverse the wind; all we know is he's called the Secret Aerodynamicist.

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I really miss the Stig segments in the (now) old top gear with clarkson, may and hammond. Really unfortunate what happened to that show - it kept me going through some ugly periods in life.

The Grand Tour is 95% the same show. In many ways I actually prefer it to Top Gear.

I honestly don’t like it, they are trying too hard to make it funny and while in top gear I sometimes wondered if the joke is scripted or a natural one, in grand tour I feel like every joke is scripted, and most of them are quite poor. Also they don’t spend as much time reviewing cars as they did in top gear, which I liked

I felt that the second season greatly improved from the first. I'd say the studio segments were still pretty subpar compared to the Top Gear days, but they seemed to get a better handle on the rest of it. I haven't watched the latest season yet, but hopefully they managed to improve again.

If you gave up after the first season, you might want to give the later ones a shot. Though I have to admit I never cared too much about the reviews, so that's worth keeping in mind.

s3 is really good - the car reviews are back, the panoramic views and cinematic genius of top gear is back.

Really? I honestly can't remember the last time I didn't think every single utterance in Top Gear was scripted. I can't remember the last time they reviewed a car either. Are you not thinking of Top Gear of 20 years ago?

The classic series of top gear (mid 2000s) are brilliant, organic and only scripted in terms of set pieces (No dialogue)

It’s so not. It’s conpletely missing what made the early seasons of new Top Gear so magical at times.

Now it is just typical 100% staged reality TV bullshit.

It is not really all that different from the later Top Gear Seasons though.

> Now it is just typical 100% staged reality TV bullshit.

Don't you feel they are mocking staged reality?

Having worked briefly on a unit attached to the show, huge amounts of Top Gear during the Clarkson era were also "staged". (I'm assuming by that you mean scripted).

Oh, I'm not saying that it wasn't, but in the early Clarkson years it was....less flagrant.. and the show was mostly (obviously scripted) studio segments. I have nothing against scripted television, I just don't like it when they pretend they're on some grand adventure when in reality everything was probably planned shot for shot in advance.

Everything became "oh, look how witty and clever and snarky we are" rather than humor developing organically.

> Everything became "oh, look how witty and clever and snarky we are" rather than humor developing organically.

Yes, agreed.

The script sounds like it was written by an AI trained on a combination of old top gear and an American dictionary (i.e. why is Clarkson giving temperatures in Fahrenheit when he used to shun all things American etc.)

The dynamic between the three of them is good but (and the ev supporters and musk drive me crazy too) what Clarkson did with Tesla was fundamentally dishonest. As was the Argentina thing. So.. clever and funny but also a bit suss.

The cool wall is every pub conversation ever.

The Argentina thing is the one thing that I feel like was actually just a mistake

If James may is to be believed, there were only two of that Porsche in the UK (And Jeremy was insisting on a(?) 928)

Despite popular opinion, I like the new Top Gear (once they got rid of Chris Evans). The last two series with Matt LeBlanc was really good.

Will reserve judgement on the new-new line up with McGuinness and Flintoff [1]. McGuinness used to be funny, and Flintoff's podcast [2] is/was brilliant.

* [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-45937945

* [2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08fr7t1/episodes/downloads | https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/flintoff-savage-and-the-...

Chris Harris is a legend. The segments of him racing would've been impossible with the old lot

I've worked a lot with Chris Harris on various projects with car manufacturers. He is indeed a very nice man, with a great sense of humour, and hasn't let his slightly bumpy road to televisual semi-stardom change him.

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