[Leica] WAY OT: Top Gear--ruined by the Americans?

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2010-11-27-10:09:32 Harrison McClary:
> I do not see ANY way three
> Americans can even come close to the humor and satire of Hammond,
> Jeremy and C'ptn Slow....

That sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.  Such transplants are
almost always doomed to failure - at least creative failure, even if
somehow they find a receptive audience.  It surely isn't Top Gear
without the chemistry of the proper set of presenters.

Really the only recent counterexample I can think of to this
no-transplants rule is "The Office" - which I initially assumed would
have to be insipidly terrible compared to the brilliant,
nearly-unwatchably-uncomfortable original, but which seems to have
found its own (albeit American-tinged) way.  But Ricky Gervais was
involved in the adaptation, which clearly helped.

 -Jeff