TV Tonight is reporting that Charlie Cox will be replaced by musician James Morrison for the second season of Top Gear Australia. You might remember Morrison as the Star In A Reasonably Priced Car in episode six.

The change was supposedly due to Charlie Cox having too many media and business commitments.

“My time on Top Gear Australia was very special and it was a fantastic opportunity to be part of launching an extraordinary series. Sadly, though, I’ve lived in the UK for the past 19 years and I’m not able to give the time I want to Series Two. It seems best to leave the show and I wish James all the best in joining the two best blokes in Australian television -Warren Brown and Steve Pizzati,” Cox said.

Thanks to Neerav Bhatt for the tip via Twitter.

Looks like the previous videos being made UK-only was either a fluke or all the complaints decided to make them not do it again. Either way, here’s three videos from 12×06 for you that are region free thanks to TopGear.com:

• News uncut
• Communist cars
• Ford Fiesta review

Thanks to everyone who sent in tips!

Just a quick note to let you know that our chat widget is working again, although I still recommend connecting via mIRC or Chatzilla.

Today’s episode of Top Gear is out now. As usual, it’s also available via HTTP (free forum registration required) if you prefer not to use the torrent.

Just a reminder that Top Gear is airing an hour later today, i.e. it’s on the air now instead of being over 20 minutes ago. Since I don’t have a time traveling device, this means the release will also be an hour late today.

Second, due to boring technical issue that I won’t bother explaining, our chat widget is essentially broken. You’ll need to use a real IRC client such as mIRC or the Firefox extension ChatZilla for the time being if you want to connect.

So it looks like Top Gear US won’t be coming to NBC. The US version of TopGear.com reports that the BBC has decided to take the show to cable.

We have a scoop on the much-anticipated U.S. version of “Top Gear”: BBC has decided to take the show to cable, where presenters’ funny mouths, from which often spill foul words, will be more at home. There are no hard feelings and NBC will be sharing custody of “Top Gear” dog. A number of cable networks were delighted with the news…

Personally I think this is great news because I had been worried that if the show didn’t get incredible ratings within it’s first few weeks, NBC would just cancel it. The pressure for high ratings is probably much less on cable networks and that will allow time for the show to grow into it’s own.

We’ll keep you updated.

The Australian portal of TopGear.com launched today. It has videos and umm, stuff. Actually it’s just a lot like the UK version but with less videos and more Australian-specific stuff. No mention of the Australian version of the show from what I can tell.

Pretty good episode this week I hear. Get it now.

It seems TopGear.com has made the unfortunate decision to make the videos on their site only playable within the UK. This change is very recent as when I posted those videos yesterday, there were playable here in the USA. I sincerely hope it’s just a bug or something on Brightcove’s part (they’re the company handling the video serving for TopGear.com), but that’s probably not the case.

Looks like we’re going to have to start mirroring the videos or something so people like me who are outside of the UK can watch them.

This isn’t news really, more it’s a lack of news. A caller on Adam Carolla’s show asked him if he had any news about Top Gear and sadly no, still no word whatsoever from NBC about the show. If you want to listen just for the hell of it, here’s the podcast — the call starts at 12:30 about in:

You can also download it if you’d like as the above player seems to be a bit buggy when it comes to MP3s.

However with Knight Rider being canceled some room is opening up in NBC’s schedule. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they replaced it with Top Gear.

Thanks to jpp44345 for the tip!