The original Top Gear is the Sistine Chapel of car shows. Not only does the UK series have access to the most prestigious automobiles, its hosts discuss them with endless wit and charm. There’s a reason that Australia attempted to remake the show on two separate occasions — and there’s a reason the previous attempts failed.
In 2008, SBS took a crack at making an Australian version of Top Gear, but the series was met with lukewarm reviews and inconsistent ratings. The Nine network gave Top Gear Australia a go in 2011, but the series failed to establish a fanbase.
This year, Paramount is stepping up to the plate, and they’ve enlisted the help of The Amazing Race’s Beau Ryan, Australian Survivor’s Jonathan LaPaglia, and Mighty Car Mods’ Blair Joscelyne. The hosts are all motorheads with extensive presenting experience, and they’re hoping this is the secret ingredient to making Top Gear Australia a success.
LaPaglia, Ryan, and Joscelyne all believe they have what it takes to resurrect Top Gear Australia from the dead. Speaking with The Latch, they explained that the chemistry they shared on set elevated the show’s prerequisite car shenanigans.
“On set, the chemistry was there, it was there straightaway,” Ryan said. “We hung out every second of every day for just under four months. We had 130 shoot days. You can fake chemistry for a couple of days, but you can’t fake it for 130 days. If you can, you are seriously talented. And LaPaglia is seriously talented.”
“It’s a misnomer that Top Gear is a car show,” LaPaglia chimed in. “It’s really a buddy show about three guys travelling around, having fun, and doing stupid shit in fast cars.”
Joscelyne agreed with his fellow hosts, and gave credit to the crew for making the hosts’ banter pop.
“One of the most exciting things about working on this version of the show is that we made it with a lot of the key UK crew members,” Joscelyne said. “They’ve been making the show for years and years. They brought decades of experience to this production. They also helped us scale up our version. We’ve been to countries all over the planet. We’ve been to South America, we’ve been to Europe, and we’ve even been to Albion Park.”
However, while Top Gear Australia has taken a lot of inspiration from its European counterpart, there are some aspects of the original that they may have chosen not to export.
Like the Sistine Chapel, the original version of Top Gear didn’t emerge from the earth fully formed. The golden era of this show was created by the hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May. Between 2003 and 2015, these men used their charisma and witticisms to make Top Gear a cultural institution.
Still, this version of Top Gear isn’t above critique. To put it politely, this era had a slew of controversies over the course of its 12-year run. One of the more consistent critiques levied at the show was that it promoted dangerous driving. At times, some of the hosts sped on public roads, and they frequently pressured one another to engage in dangerous behind-the-wheel behaviour.
In the UK, speeding kills and injures 54 young people every week, and young men in the country are particularly prone to driving dangerously. While the golden era of Top Gear isn’t directly responsible for the foolish decisions of young people, it certainly helped normalise such high-risk acts.
Beau Ryan, Jonathan LaPaglia, and Blair Joscelyne couldn’t speak to these issues, but they were keen to discuss how their own show depicts driving fast in fast cars. They all know that speeding is an epidemic in Australia, and that some young Aussies feel peer-pressured to drive in a reckless fashion.
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