My new favorite TV show

G. K. Chesterton said that there is no such thing as an uninteresting subject. There can only be an uninterested person. His point was that EVERYTHING in this created order is, when seen properly, amazing. A corollary that I have long noted is that ANY subject can be made interesting if it is presented with the requisite skill.

I don’t have that much interest in automobiles, but I do have interest in a TV show about them,
Top Gear. It’s a British show, to be found here on BBC America, and it is stone cold hilarious. The rumpled Jeremy Clarkson leads a team of English motorheads who test automobiles. . . Well, that doesn’t capture it. A typical show brings on a celebrity to see how fast he can drive a “reasonably priced car,” and humorous things always happen. (For example, on a recent episode, they supposedly sent out an invitation to everyone in the year’s Who’s Who. A celebrity showed up, but the hosts didn’t know who he was.) Then the team test drives some 100,000 pound sports car (that’s money, not weight, over $200,000 American money) in an entertaining way. Then the team takes on some project that fails miserably (building an amphibious vehicle, designing the interior of a car so that it accords with what you would like to see in your house, turning a van into a convertible that, unfortunately, catches fire in a carwash).

Well, I can hardly convey the full magnitude of this show. If you like British humor, never mind if you don’t like cars. You need to see TOP GEAR for yourself.