‘Top Gear’ – BBC1

Sunday night found Top Gear in a suitably reflective mood. A stalwart BBC TV show ostensibly about cars, but increasingly documenting the fragile male ego, it seems only right that in this day and age it takes a moment for quite contemplation. Probably standing in the corner of the classroom wearing a dunces cap. There’s something rotten in the state of Dudemark and the BBC needs to fix it pronto, or this internationally successful juggernaut will eventually fail its MOT and be hauled off to the scrapyard.

The new presenting team would be forgiven for thinking they might be stuck with a poisoned chalice here. Neither Chris Evans nor Matt Le Blanc had enough star power or quite the right character to carry the show. Neither of them were Jeremy Clarkson, which for some parts of the audience is a unforgivable error, but for me (and punched producers everywhere) it’s a big plus. It’s 2019 and pub bores are taking over everywhere. Let’s keep them off our entertainment shows unless they are Al Murray.

We meet the new boys in a confessional mood rare for previous incarnations of the show, inspired by nostalgia for their misspent youth. Chris, Freddie and Parry go on their first jaunt in vehicles as close to their first cars as they could find. Freddie Flintoff freely admits he was “a bit of a knobhead” – which was almost certainly encouraged by the fact he played professional cricket from such a young age and could afford a Porsche when most people start out with a Ford Fiesta. This is a neat way to introduce the new presenters as ordinary(ish) young men, whatever unlikely and rarefied jobs they went on to do.

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'Top Gear' – On the Box

Peer pressure. It’s peer pressure plain and simple.
The Top Gear reboot was going to be such a big event it was unavoidable. Everyone was going to have a loud and aggressive opinion about it so last night I found myself putting it on at 8pm sharp, telling Mr H not to get too used to it. Neither of us drive, so it’s pretty difficult to be entertained by what is essentially a car review show.
As far as I can tell, Top Gear has always been awful. Either too serious, too factual and too boring in its initial inception and then after the 2002 relaunch too stupid, too loud and too macho. The presenters were men old enough to know better running around growling politically incorrect nonsense and shouting their surnames at each other like retarded public school boys.
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