HERE'S a television pitch. How about instead of Top Gear, we have a fictional satire, based around the cut-throat world of television car programmes and the materialistic fetishisation of the automobile, starring a famous actor who has already played an egomaniac version of himself.
And let’s have it scripted by the sharpest of scriptwriters. Just a notion I’ve been toying with since the announcement that one of the new presenters of Top Gear will be Matt LeBlanc, who famously played Joey from Friends and Matt LeBlanc (not quite himself) from Episodes. Just something I’ve been thinking since it occurred to me I might find Top Gear a bit more palatable if it was more like the satirical comedy Episodes.
Up until now, one of the key television questions of the year – namely, which new petrol-head would present Top Gear? – has provoked about as much curiosity in me as the critical issue of whether the McLaren 570S is faster than the Audi R8 V10S. In other words, none. Whatever the show’s creators did, whoever was going to host, whether Chris Evans or Sue Perkins, it seemed to me Top Gear was still going to end up being a consumer show dedicated to speed, profligate waste and our ongoing dysfunctional relationship with the gas-guzzling car. Then along came Matt LeBlanc.
Of course, it’s not that any of that has changed. Top Gear will still surely continue to be a show primarily aimed at petrol-heads, rather than tree-huggers, cyclists and feminists. But it will have Matt LeBlanc in it. And, note, I don’t say “Joey from Friends”, because it’s not him I care about: it’s Matt Le Blanc, the “sleazy, manipulative, yet weirdly winning fictional version of himself” (Salon magazine) at the heart of Episodes. For a bit of that Matt, I thought for the first time, I might just tune into the new Top Gear.
But I’m also suspicious. One of the key problems for Top Gear has been that they know they need a buffoon. That, above all, was what they lost when they got rid of Clarkson, who was, for all his puerile bigotry, comically gifted. How to fill the hole that had once brimmed with bombastic political incorrectness? Clearly a new buffoon was needed. Enter Matt LeBlanc – and what is special about him is he is a kind of meta-buffoon. He’s a guy who was willing to send up his own life and character so much in Episodes that we no longer know who he really is. We’re not even sure he knows, though he did once say: “I am not afraid if people think Matt LeBlanc in Episodes is who I am – my friends and family know who I am.”
For a taster of what might be to come in the new Top Gear, you only have to look as far as LeBlanc's presenting of an American Top Gear compilation series. In a trailer for the show, in his usual square-jawed deadpan, he declares: “I’m Matt LeBlanc. When my agent asked me if I wanted to host this series of compilation shows that brings together Top Gear's greatest races … I said no. But then they offered me this signed photo of James May and I was on the plane to England.”
A star like Matt LeBlanc, bringing with him his Episodes history and persona, changes the tone of the show and destablises it. We are no longer really sure what is sincere and what is not. Does that mean that with his casting,there is a Top Gear out there for people like me?
Actually I don’t think so, though I will take a peek. It might be nice to fantasise that Top Gear could become a satire of all that we once thought was sexist, retrograde and chauvinistic about the car programme, but that’s not really on the cards. Matt LeBlanc is genuinely a petrol-head who self-describes as a “car nut” and did the fastest time ever on Top Gear in a “reasonably priced car”.
Top Gear meanwhile is a globally successful celebratory show about cars, designed to appeal to the guys, and the gals, who love them. Any fears over global warming, diesel emissions or the impact of a sedentary drive-not-walk culture on health are likely to be given short shrift. The future of the planet is not the Top Gear concern.
No, if I want proper irony and parody, I’m going to have to look further than the new Top Gear. Episodes reruns, perhaps? Or maybe that new car show starting over on Amazon Prime later this year with Jeremy Clarkson as a presenter who somehow has managed to get a big job in spite of the fact he allegedly punched his former producer and caused outrage with language deemed by many to be racist? But sadly that's not satire. That's real life.
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