Mud, Sweat and Gears

Here's what I like about this series. It doesn't try to be something it isn't. You wanna watch 2 British hosts and 4 contestants having fun destroying some older cars while racing around performing stunts then this is the show for you. I was lucky enough to be on the show and I can tell you that I had the best time ever building this car and trashing it. My hope is that when viewers see this show they think to themselves "Man, how do I get on this show it looks like so much fun". Yes the stunts are real and we took them all in one shot, we were not allowed to change the outcome if it didn't look good. It was dangerous and fun with a pinch of fire and exploding things flying past your face. I can only hope I get called back to do it again.

I can tell you from experience that the challenges are real and the fun is off the charts. I hope you enjoy my episode coming out in March.

Darren

Mud, Sweat and Gears is like Top Gear, Fun. Cooky, Inventive, but American. But I'd be pretty much wrong because there's American Top Gear. But who cares about that one, it's rubbish, this is much better. The show is fun with new competitors every episode, new challenges every episode, new cars every week, and it's unpredictable. In some episodes, you get debates, discussions, arguments, things going wrong which you'd probably not see in some TV Shows because they'd of decided to do the arguing off set or leave out the parts where things fall off, but no, they don't. This is a great TV Show and defiantly deserves a watch.

Hosts have only the most dubious 'credentials', which makes sense since who would want their reputation trashed by being connected to this mess ? Oh these idiots are also mega annoying and their interactions are pathetically contrived, even worse than on reality crap like Pawn Stars, Counting Cars and similar garbage. The guest contestants each week are even worse, the budget and 1 day time limitations result in stupidities that are so breathtaking you can feel their contempt for the audience oozing thru the screen. What needs to be 'annihilated' is this travesty of a show. Running this directly after Top Gear just makes it all worse by comparison, they need to position it for an audience that knows absolutely nothing about cars and has no interest in them.

"Imagine, if you will, an 'Ultimate Cop Car' ... challenged by a wall of paper boxes..."

When I saw the promos for Mud, Sweat and Gears, I was one eager BBC viewer. I'm a devoted follower of MythBusters, used to love 'robot' demolition, and was heartbroken when they cancelled Junkyard Wars.

And oh, man, am I disappointed...

I'm a huge fan of BBC programming, from intelligent news to great drama to the silly stuff. But if I didn't know better I'd've thought this was a product of one of the Basic Cable ad-server networks.

In succinct American vernacular: Lame.

Also, Highly Contrived and an Opportunity Pathetically Missed.

The hosts' 'rivalry' is trite and transparent. The contestant introductions are brief, shallow and boring. The 'Grand Revelation' of the subject vehicles is just poorly contrived pseudo-drama. The whole set-up of each episode is utterly, stunningly, embarrassingly Lame.

The teams haven't the time (one day) or resources to do something actually interesting. There's no demonstration of expertise, no clever design shared with the viewer, very little is shown of the build, and what little is shown is of the distinctly seen-that- before variety. The resulting 'Ultimate' creations are ultimately underwhelming.

(This time, BBC, you've failed at the very Standards you so proudly market: you're not only shamefully ignorant of your audience, you're bloody disrespectful. This tripe is the antithesis of BBC Programming Standards.)

The 'challenges' -- billed as real-world tests of achievement -- are anything but. Imagine, if you will, an 'Ultimate Cop Car' that is challenged by a wall of paper boxes and then must drive around under an overpass. Srsly.

Or an 'Ultimate Wrecking Machine' that must knock over a pole on a thing like a Christmas-tree stand and then haul a few bits of concrete rubble like a wheelbarrow (some blokes racing each other with wheelbarrows would have, in fact, been more entertaining and done a better job).

All that, un-dramatically punctuated with small, gratuitous effects cannons shooting flame (episode 1) or dust (episode 2). (My episode 3 prediction: blowing manure.)

I'm sorry, BBC -- no, really -- I seldom bother to write negative reviews (folks know when they're seeing crap, and don't need me to tell them about it). And I'm not writing this because I hate the show.

I'm writing because I am so damned let-down.

So BBC, please take this in the intended spirit. This idea could've become a great show; at least another Monster Garage, maybe even a Junkyard Wars; but you blew the opportunity through an unimaginable lack of imagination, cheap execution, and really bad acting. Sorry.

So very, disappointingly, crushingly, sorry.

/s/ Galena Alyson Canada

P.S. BBC-am -- how come you keep replaying the same handful of Star Trek TNG episodes, over and over again? You know they did more than two seasons, right?