You people really think it would be the same show just because of them? It would be similar but I bet it would be worse too, unless they somehow get Wilman and most of the production team to go with them (which maybe would happen, in which case great), and somehow end up with a similar budget. Doubt all of that happens, but who knows, maybe they'd get an even bigger budget.
Honestly at this point the bitching about the show being limited by the BBC is more of a nuisance than any actual limiting by the BBC that I can tell. By far the actual problem with the show has been with either the presenters (Hammond has perked up the last couple of season I feel, sadly Jeremy seems to be getting younger mentally the older he gets, or maybe he's just stuck at acting like a 12 year old?) or the painfully obvious acting/scripting, and that is not the BBC but rather the show's creativity or lack thereof.
I'm fairly meh. I enjoy the show but it's often not that great and I actually think a lot of the things I enjoy about the show (the cars mixed with the production values) are often made worse by the presenters (there's a lot of their reviews that I'd enjoy more just watching the Stig drive the hell out of the car for pretty much the whole segment, maybe with some voiceover). If it's not them making the exact same argument they've made 100 times before, it's them spouting off stupid hyperbole. I could skip the news segment easily, and definitely the SIARPC. Really the only reason I watch it anymore are the specials and occasionally they'll have something I really enjoy while the rest is just kinda background noise/time wasting. Personally I would much rather they cut the time filler junk and extend the actual segments since there's a lot of them that would surely have content worthy of being longer than the like 10-20 minutes segments they get. I definitely like that they've made most specials 2 parters now.
I wouldn't like the show to end, although I wouldn't be that sad if it did. I'm sure if they wanted to they could setup another similar show, and I actually think the BBC could find good presenters to take over. It'd be fairly different but I don't think that means absolutely worse. I'd love to see Chris Harris on there for instance, and I'm sure there's other people that would be fine (wouldn't have to be auto journalists, as May and Hammond are both really more into other things). I'd love to even see guest members or something, where it could be just for an episode or maybe for the series (and/or be recurring), that could participate in some of their competitions, or be the setup. Just thinking of segments like their bus/tax/etc tests where they got a bunch of rally/DTM drivers for instance.
The more interesting thing to me is, say they do decide to sack Jeremy, I assume Hammond and May would quit as presenters, but would Andy Wilman stay or go? If he stays, I think there's a good chance the show could continue and still offer a lot of what drew me to it in the first place. If not, then I'd expect a pretty drastic change (as in it goes straight informative Consumer Reports style, or them not even attempting a similar show, at least for a while).
It was pretty shitty before he was in it.
It was shitty before
with him in it too, they even joked about that early on. I think people grossly overestimate how much of the show is actually the 3 presenters. People really don't seem to understand how much of a group effort and how scripted it really is, which is astonishing really with how blatant it is (it's very obvious how much they're just playing roles and acting these days, although it's almost always been pretty obvious especially after the first few seasons when they settled into it).
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