clarkson duel

There was no rental DVD this week.

On my plan I actually only get 3 rentals a month, so that means I often end up with one weekend a month with no rental disk. Ideally I'd upgrade to one of the unlimited packages, but they're a lot more expensive and I've heard they're not quite as "unlimited" as they purport to be. Also I'd end up watching them instead of my bought stuff, which wouldn't be very helpful.

Anyway, I did watch something else that's mini review worthy - the new Jeremy Clarkson DVD, which is called "Duel".

It's called duel because that's basically what it's about - competing things against each other. The competitions included:

- What's the best drifting car?
- Who's the fastest off-road celebrity?
- Which is fastest - a man or a car?
- Which will hit the ground first - a penny or a Ford Scorpio?
- Which is the best TV motoring show - Top Gear or Fifth Gear?

There were other bits too, but those were the main ones.

I should also point out that this is the first Jeremy Clarkson DVD I've actually watched. He's been putting them out for years now, but I've never really felt inclined to buy one. However, recently I've been watching a lot of Top Gear on Dave (don't ask) and this DVD seemed quite Top Gear-ish in nature, so I thought I'd pick it up.

Overall, I found it a bit hit and miss if I'm honest, both in terms of the actual entertainment value and in terms of really being about 'duels'.

One of the big problems is that the first bit on drifting doesn't really seem to have much focus. It's like they took half a dozen cars with them in Spain and then decided what to do with them when they got there. I mean, Clarkson spends half the bit driving around in a 4-wheel drive Lamborghini in which he makes it clear it's impossible to drift.

The idea was he was demonstrating the type of car that wasn't good for drifting and why, but it feels a bit loose - a bit "well, we've also got this Lambo, how can we include it in a bit about drifting?"

And that slightly unfocused problem crops up in several other places too. For example, the Ford Scorpio versus the penny bit just comes across as a random. A bit, let's drop a car from a great height because... er... we can race it against... something. No, wait, I know - a penny!

A penny?

Yes, a penny. It'll be brilliant.

Well, actually, it's okay from a wanton destruction point of view, but it's hardly the world's greatest duel. I mean, you can't really even see a penny falling :/.

And there's also a bit on the end involving a catapult that I didn't really get at all. I mean, if the penny/Scorpio thing is an odd duel then the catapult bit doesn't make any sense as a duel at all.

However, the DVD also has some really good bits too. The actual apple-crushing car drifting part is amusing, for example. And both the fastest off-road celebrity and top gear versus fifth gear bits are genuinely brilliant. In a way, I'd much rather have seen more of them than some of the other bits.

So yeah - hit and miss.

Which means it's actually very much like Top Gear - some stuff is really good, some bits really funny, other bits feel a bit shoe-horned in or don't quite make sense.

On balance, I'd say it's an entertaining watch if you really like the Top Gear stunts and races, but some bits you could skip through and not really miss anything.