Review: Gears And Tears, BBC1 (From Leigh Journal)

Review: Gears And Tears, BBC1

3:28pm Wednesday 25th August 2010 in

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I DISLIKE petrolheads and, indeed, believe the first six letters could easily be replaced by something more offensive and still mean the same.

Top Gear, for instance, annoys the hell out of me, but I was attracted to this particular programme because as a child I lived near the then stock car world champion Frankie Wainman — his car, number 212, was a fixture at local galas.

It seems, 20-odd years on, the Wainmans are still at the top of this particular game, with Frankie Junior 515 now the main man.

To be fair, stock car racing is a bit like darts and snooker, or American football in the States — barely anyone else does it, so you shouldn’t have much trouble producing a world champion from your particular country.

This programme attempted to put a Shakespearean twist to the Battle of the Roses between the warring Wainmans of Yorkshire and the Smiths of Lancashire.

There’s not much romance here, though, as the families really do seem to be rivals and the setting for this particular story is Skegness.

There’s drama, in that sporting Yorkshiremen the Wainmans are unhappy with the car Lancastrian Smith intends to use in the European Championships. A committee meets and decides the Rochdale racer’s vehicle is okay (boo!), but the Wainmans believe the members are biased and Frankie “Smiler” Wainman is not living up to his nickname.

These people are obsessed and, despite the cars looking like something you might come across at a fairground and the background plotting, the sport does appear to be marginally more interesting than Formula 1. Like F1, there’s not much overtaking, but at least you can simply bump the other cars out of the way.

Anyway, there’s a lot of people in overalls with their heads in engines and then the action gets under way — and, hurrah, Smith exits early, leaving the way clear for young Frankie to steer his way through the pack.

Sadly, all doesn’t end happily ever after and Frankie loses out too, which kind of ruins the programme.

There’s lots of footage of the women of the families hollering and shrieking, as you would expect, in what I presume is pretty much a male-dominated affair.

Just like in all motoring programmes, there’s the usual injection of glamour and it comes in the shape of 17-year-old driver Georgia, who is pictured clambering into her car and posing for photographers. Unfortunately, she goes some way to conforming to stereotype by struggling to get her vehicle into gear and then repeatedly crashing the thing. Still, expect to find her on a calendar near you soon.

Me, I’m going to give the stock cars a miss and stick with the Demolition Derby game my brother got for Christmas 1979 (I got Connect 4).