Top Gear Seasons 1-22

Top Gear can boast to being one of the most popular TV shows ever made. It’s watched by an audience of 350 million across 214 territories, has a live stadium tour, five million YouTube subscribers, and a magazine with 1.7 million readers. Furthermore, Top Gear has broken quite a few records in their long 22 season run. Here’s just a few of the big ones:

· World Record: The most widely watched factual programme… in the world.

· World Record: The first ever double loop the loop in history.

· World Record: James May has set a new world record for the longest-ever slot car track.

· World Record: Austin Allegro jump in reverse

· World record: Attempt for number of times a car has rolled at high speed

They have a budget of around £500k per episode, which is an incredible budget, but how much profit can this car show pull in? Top gear has been regarded numerous times as “BBC’s biggest global money spinner”. It has been said that Top gear makes about £50m a year in total. Now some of you might be saying that’s great and all, but is this fast-paced, stunt-filled motor show with three ragtag British blokes as hosts who destroy more objects than they use worth the watch? Well allow me to explain.

Throughout the many years (24 to be exact) they have done everything from building a speedboat out of a pickup truck, sailing across the English Channel in Nissan pickup truck that had been converted into a powerboat, being the first people to drive to the North Pole, and destroying a few caravans. Quite a few caravans. Now let me just interject with the fact that I am extremely underselling this show. There aren't enough words to describe the stupefying content in Top Gear. They have done something new, creative, and entertaining in every single episode. You would think with about 180 episodes, it would get insipid or banal, but that's simply not the case. There’s creativity coming out of every exhaust pipe and Stig cousin (of which there are 11) all amounting to this incredible television show.

Now let’s go over the hosts. The hamster, Richard Hammond, James “Captain Slow” May, and the resident orangutan, the gaffer himself, Jezza. Or as he’s less commonly known, Jeremy Clarkson. Their chemistry both on and off the camera is in lack of better words, shoddy. But that gives us all a lot of opportunities of laugh at them till our sides hurt. There is no feasible way I could possibly go over everything, there’s not nearly enough time, and I would do them no justice. Simply go and have a gander for yourself.

My rating for Top Gear is an ‘A’. It is the number one my most likely to recommend list of TV shows. I give it such a high rating because it has everything one could look for in a television show: humor (plenty of that), factual information (they do a car review and have a news section each episode), drama (plenty from the hosts, but also quite a few from the celebrities who go round a lap in hopes of getting the best time against fellow celebrities), family friendly (few cuss words, nothing too inappropriate, for the most part kids can watch), aesthetics (the production value in each review and challenge is breathtaking) and much much more. Simply put, this show is a lot more than the playground for a few petrol heads (gear head motor head for the Americans). They have plenty to offer and have accomplished so much more.