Reception
James Walton—writing for The Daily Telegraph—said he was surprised to find Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel "a pretty rich documentary" describing its real strength as " up lashings of the kind of pure Americana that many other British documentaries have striven much harder for, without matching." The Scotsman presented a more mixed view saying it was a "much more reflective Top Gear-related product than usual" but commented that "Knievel was clearly getting fed up of Hammond and, frankly, I was getting tired of him". In contrast to Hammond's conclusion that Knievel was still his hero, the journalist wrote "For those of us who didn't play with the wind-up motorbike doll when we were six, didn't seem all that heroic".
The Observer's Roger Alton describes the show as one of the highlights of the Christmas period when it was first shown, calling it a "fantastic achievement" and describing it as a "stunning, poignant, visually saturated interview". Paul Hirons on the TV Scoop website described it as a "entertaining and poignant documentary" and admired Hammond's "refreshingly non-arse-kissy approach to interviewing his hero" but described it as "a shame" that Knievel had not warmed to Hammond.
David Belcher's article in The Herald was far more critical describing it as "hellish to witness grievous damage being done to the Hamster's cuddly reputation by the ill-advised documentary farrago that was Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel." He described Hammond's "worship" of Knievel as "oddly punitive" as he "pursued the dying man through the streets of his shabby home town, Butte, Montana."
Read more about this topic: Richard Hammond Meets Evel Knievel
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)