I’m very surprised that BBC America has decided to release Top Gear Season 11 and Top Gear Season 12 together; for the longest time, there were no Top Gear DVDs available, a trend they finally broke when they released Season 10 last year. The result was a little disappointing, with badly-replaced music tracks, missing segments and no special features whatsoever.
It seems as though they’re trying, by degrees, to make up for that. Both of the new seasons, released on January 12, seem to have far fewer problems than the season 10 DVD did, and while I haven’t watched the show (which, by the way, is brilliant and hilarious—it brings muscle cars and geek culture together in a way only the Batmobile can match, and is a bit like “Mythbusters” for cars) enough to examine things like the soundtrack thoroughly, it seems that there are no—nope, scratch that—there are far fewer, and far less random changes made to the source material. While the Top Gear Stuntman segments are still missing from the eleventh season, and it still has no special features at all, the news segments and the “Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car” segments are fully intact and the music is either the same as in the broadcast or much better-replaced.
The twelfth season is funny; it’s got more episodes, AND a few nifty special features (a commentary track, deleted scenes, expanded versions of episodes and segments). It’s starting to really look like what I would expect out of a Top

Gear DVD; frankly, it’s been really surprising to see the “base model” being the only item available on the market so far, given that the show revolves around the craziest, most expensive and feature-rich automobiles on the planet. It’s also clear that the hosts are pop culture junkies, so it’s not as though they don’t know full well how to best make a DVD an entertaining watch and a real value for the fans; it’s good to see that they’ve finally started to do so.
That isn’t to say that the DVDs themselves are entirely without fault; one good example is that if you watch only a little
bit of the disc and want to come back later, there are no helpful things like keywords or episode titles on the submenus; when you go to “Play Episodes,” you’re given helpful options like “Episode 1, Episode 2” and so on. Also, the Botswana special (the one that carries the lion’s share of the season’s special features) is actually a popular episode from season 10, and not at all from the season 12 DVD it’s released on. That’s good for longtime fans who have been disappointed that there haven’t been any special features on any of the discs, but it does seem…a bit random. Why not release it as a standalone, $10 DVD? Surely it would sell, and make the BBC more money in the process.
The show itself is almost completely beyond attack; like I said, it shares a lot in common with “Mythbusters” and is one
of the funniest, most enjoyable documentary-style programs on television. If you HAVEN’T seen Top Gear, start with season 12. It’ll cost a touch more than season 11, but it’s well worth it for the extra features and the extra episodes.