Top Gear

So another new cast and Paddy and Freddie should have a chance of appealing to a wider audience than the previous incarnation. Freddie is usually pretty good value in his various road trip shows.


Also has Extra Gear been quietly dropped - when the new hosts were announced they said Rory Reid would return to front Extra Gear, but the BBC now lists no upcoming episodes.

Think they’ve finally got a decent line-up, early signs are really positive. Paddy McGuinness in particular is a great signing.

Out of interest, does the show still sell well overseas since the Clarkson days?

I'm trying to check for Extra Gear episodes as well. It's not showing up in tonight's BBC Two Schedule as it normally does when Chris Evans tried to take over the show as host a few years ago. The end credits for the first episode had a different typeface which is a big change from the show's original look.

Not a bad show but a bit forced. I'd still prefer Clarkson Hammond & May produce Top Gear for the BBC with their own production company.

I was surprised by the new line up and thought it an odd choice but I was pleasantly surprised. Although I liked the last couple of series with Matt Le Blanc this first episode just seemed to work so much better.

A shame Rory Reid doesn't have a role but he never seemed that confident or fit in that well on the adventure films

That's never going to happen. Haven't they ended, or at least reduced the number of episodes they make? They wouldn't want to go back to BBC money

I think with this line up they'll go back to two series a year - Matt Le Blanc's availabilty affected the previous one, although apparently the last series finished filming in April 2018 but only aired earlier this year.

As for it's international appeal - I assume it probably airs via the BBC in most places anyway, though I know in Australia it ended up on the main networks. I also think they were somewhat protected by the Clarkson situation coming at a point when many local versions were beginning to be made anyway, although not sure how many got beyond a first series.

The studio (tent) episodes of The Grand Tour have finished for good, they’re only going to make a handful of specials/films for Amazon per year. Worth noting that Jeremy and James have also got their own solo projects for Amazon to be shown within the next year also. Safe to say they’re not going back to the BBC at any point for the foreseeable future.

The studio element of TGT was probably the one thing that didn’t work when coming over from Top Gear. Where as the series 3 of TGT appeared to have more specials than normal episodes this time. That, in my opinion they have equalled if not improved from their TG days.

Having said that I was a bit sceptical over the choice of Padddy and Freddie, but seeing the trailers and previews it doesn’t seem to be a bad one. Will try to aim to watch it on iPlayer at some point during the week.

Hopefully for TG, they might have turned a corner after the last few years if early reviews are anything to go by.

I wondered why Series 27 was airing only three months after Series 26 finished.

Worth nothing that Prime Video’s take up would be a lot, lot, less in territories where Amazon doesn’t offer the “full” Prime service - Prime Video only launched in Ireland when The Grand Tour launched and initially its catalogue was rubbish, practically only Prime Originals. There’s a bit more on it these days but still not as much as the UK (contrast with Netflix where the UK and Irish services are practically identical). The point being that outside Amazon’s core territories, Top Gear probably still gets more attention than the Grand Tour.

For those who haven’t been watching The Grand Tour, the final episode of the latest series ended with Clarkson tearing up over the end of the traditional weekly studio-based format, but with promises that the team still like Amazon and will continue making programmes for them. But I think it’s clear that the show hasn’t been the success it was hoped it would be at the start.

I agree with Inspector Sands, tonight’s Top Gear was surprisingly enjoyable given the fears when the new hosts were announced. Early days but there was already an immediate chemistry between the three, much more so than the last trio (in the last series there seemed to be much fewer bits featuring all three of them, instead it was usually Harris and Le Blanc).

One thing I didn’t like was Chris Harris complaining of dehydration and heatstroke and still having to wear that jumper. Even if Harris was just playing it up for the show I still didn’t find it entertaining, it was just uncomfortable.

The last episode of traditional The Grand Tour was an interesting one as they properly acknowledged all their years on the BBC as well, with a very nice montage of their best moments from Top Gear and The Grand Tour:



I think there are far more clips from Top Gear in there than there are TGT, but considering how long Top Gear ran for in a way that's unsurprising. I haven't really got into TGT after being unimpressed by what I saw of the first season, but they did they generally avoid mentioning Top Gear or were they happy to embrace the past?

Must say I did find the studio bits around the montage with Clarkson properly sobbing a bit strange, with the tone suddenly turning very solemn and almost funeral-esque! The emotions did seem very real but in a way I thought it came across on-screen as a bit self-indulgent and insincere, as the fake-out ending where they celebrated the fact the show wasn't really ending was almost inevitable?!

I guess it could be a case of very genuine emotions from Clarkson and co which matched up more with the rumours in the press that the move to the new format was the beginning of Amazon quietly axing the show, which then ends up looking a bit odd once edited for TV as they're made to try and spin the whole thing in a positive way?

It didn't work for me.

I like Chris Harris, and the actual pieces in tonight's show were OK. And I think I could get used to Freddie Flintoff if he could lay off the forced attempts at humour.

But I found myself switching off before the end of the programme, the first time I've done so with TG, due to this McGuinness character. I've somehow managed to avoid him on his TV shows to date, so I didn't even recognise him when the show started. But nah, I can't be doing with him. Within 10 minutes I was shouting expletives at the screen. Absolute arse.