Click and Clack's As the Wrench Turns

Did You Know?

• PBS Home Video and Paramount Home Entertainment released the entire run on a two-disc DVD set on September 30, 2008.
• Character design was done by Stephen Silver, who also worked on the Clerks series with Kevin Smith.

Production

Executive producer Howard K. Grossman began pitching a television series based on Car Talk in 2001. PBS announced the greenlight on July 11, 2007, for a summer 2008 debut. The final product became an animated sitcom with new fictional characters alongside Click and Clack, rather than a direct adaptation of the radio show. The opening theme and other music were produced by Carl Finch and performed by his band Brave Combo.

Reception

The series received largely negative reviews. The New York Times wrote that television seemed to flatten and confine the spontaneity of Tom and Ray, and that while the show was indisputably adorable, it lacked the magic of the Magliozzis unplugged. The Boston Herald suggested that Car Talk fans would be excited until they saw the show, describing it as silly like a bad Saturday morning cartoon and portraying the brothers as low-grade scam artists.

Christopher Kulik of DVD Verdict called the series a mixed bag, noting that the humor was present but the improvisation and spontaneity were gone. He found some storylines, such as the brothers discovering pasta as an alternative energy source and angering the local Mafioso, set up big laughs, while others lacked ingenuity. Kulik described the animation as reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, dim and dry with little color or pizzazz, and compared it to George of the Jungle.

He noted that the humor would go over children's heads, indicating the show was created for an older audience, and praised the character design by Stephen Silver.