February 13, 2007

Pissing off rednecks and animal lovers: all in a day's work

BBC TV's new season is kicking off nicely. Life on Mars is back this week, and Top Gear is hitting its stride. You can tell the motoring series is doing well when that gauge of superior TV quality - complaints from viewers - sweeps majestically across the sanctimoniously puckered buttock faces of the politically correct.
Last week, presenter Richard Hammond's return from near brain-death following a horrific crash was met with boyish mockery from his fellow petrolheads, which is typical of Top Gear's irreverant character. Yes, there were complaints.
Following last nights Top Gear special, over 90 complaints were generated, and that number is rising. I'm not normally given to posting non-ad-related TV clips, but this was a classic. Two moments stand out.
Here's the premise: the three presenters are given $1,000 each to buy and car and drive it across four US states, beginning in Florida. Along the way, they are given challenges.
Clip one is the bit that's generating the complaints (about 3 minutes in). For this challenge, the guys have to camp out but are only allowed to eat what they've found dead at the side of the road.

Clip two is both damn scary and very funny. For this challenge, the boys have to decorate each other's cars in such a way as to get the driver lynched while travelling through redneck country.

Deliverance, for real...

3 comments:

Lisa Breslin said...

How did they manage to cook that thing though? It was a beast.
And Richard hammond's car - even i would have been scared to drive that. The part at the petrol station was tv gold. God bless America!

RFB said...

Ah, Sweet Land of Liberty.

But if I went to a certain part of The UK and wore a t-shirt that read "Manchester United are a bunch of Asswipes" what are the odds that I make it down the street in one piece?

These guys picked the easy fight with Alabama.

SchizoFishNChimps said...

You'd think so, jetpacks, but you can see all the anti Man U slogans in Manchester being sported by the Manchester City fans.
Man U fans, being glory hunters (along with those of a Chelsea persuasion), are probably well accustomed to their much-deserved insults.