Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns

Production

Executive producer Howard Grossman began pitching a television series based on Car Talk in 2001. On July 11, 2007, PBS announced that it had greenlit the series for debut in the summer of 2008. This is the first prime-time animated series in the history of PBS. While at first a direct adaptation of the radio show had been proposed, the final product is an animated sitcom featuring a new cast of fictional characters alongside the radio-show hosting Click and Clack.

The opening theme and other music for the series are produced by Carl Finch and composed, arranged, and performed by Finch and his Grammy-award winning band, Brave Combo.

Reception

Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns received a largely-negative response, with The New York Times commenting that "television seems to flatten and confine" Tom and Ray's spontaneity and that while the series is "indisputably adorable" it "lacks the magic of the Magliozzis unplugged." The Boston Herald opined that fans of Car Talk will be "excited to hear that Tom and Ray Magliozzi have expanded to PBS and television. Until they see the show." The show is described as "silly like a bad Saturday morning cartoon" and that the Magliozzi brothers are portrayed as "low-grade scam artists instead of the cheery, charming guys we know they are."

Judge Christopher Kulik of DVD Verdict wrote in his review of the 2008 Paramount DVD release: "As a long-time devotee of Car Talk, I found this series to be a mixed bag. The humor is certainly there, and the Magliozzis' comic punch is still hitting hard, except their famous improvisation and spontaneity is practically thrown out the window. The result is Click & Clack 2.0, as the friendly voices are there but not the belly laughs or jolly merriment the boys' audibly display every Saturday morning. The out-there stories themselves set up some big laughs, like when the boys' discover pasta as an alternative energy source for automobiles, pissing off the local Mafioso in the process. Others lack any ingenuity whatsoever. The animation itself harks back to the 60s and 70s: very dim and dry, lacks real color and pizzazz, occasionally rough around the edges. Nothing special, unless you want to return to that old-fashioned, old-school look which was prevalent in George of the Jungle. Since the humor will whisk over children's heads, it's clear this show was created specifically for the older crowd, ones who are too slow to catch every gag in The Family Guy. The show does earn points for its rich character design, courtesy of Stephen Silver, who also did the Clerks series with Kevin Smith.

Cast

DVD releases

PBS Home Video and Paramount Home Entertainment released the entire run of As the Wrench Turns on DVD. The two-disc set was released in the United States and Canada on September 30, 2008.

Disclaimers

The legal disclaimer at the end of each episode notes, "The persons in this film are not real... duh. O.K. fine, Click and Clack are the radio guys. But hey, any other similarity to actual persons or events is serendipity at best." The copyright notice on each show reads, "CTTV LLV created this hilarious show to make an honest buck, so cut us some slack and don't be knocking it off or we'll come and get ya, we swear we will. This motion picture is protected under the laws of the U.S., other countries and James Bond himself. We're not kidding here, unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in a bad day in court and a stint in the slammer. We mean it, man. We really do."