7 Ways You'd 'Fix' Top Gear
Leave the crowd alone
One of the many cringeworthy aspects of Top Gear’s studio segments was seeing Chris Evans trying to gee up the crowd. It’s not necessary and as said by suggester Its_Sufy, “leave the crowd to do their thing.”
More Harris, more Reid
While we found Top Gear on the whole pretty disappointing, the Extra Gear spin-off was enjoyable. Why? Because it centres around two car guys who know their stuff talking about, well, cars. While a show intended to have as mass an appeal as Top Gear probably wouldn’t work with just the relaxed Extra Gear format with the budget turned up a bit (well, a lot), it’s clear Chris Harris and Rory Reid are criminally underused.
Neither were in the first episode, and when we spoke to Rory Reid last week, he mentioned he was only in four of the six episodes of the main show. And it’s probably fair to assume he’ll only present one segment in each of those four. As the two people who are the best and most engaging at presenting car content, they need to be in TG a hell of a lot more than that.
Tell Evans to calm down
The complaint we heard most last Sunday was that Chris Evans was shouting too much. His presenting style was needlessly over-the-top, and it started to grate. He’s perfectly capable of presenting in a calm manner, so if he just turns it down a notch and stops thinking he’s on TFI Friday, it’ll be a big improvement.
Get rid of Evans entirely
A lot of you just don’t seem to think Evans is right for the show and should be ditched entirely. We’re not sure who would replace him in that situation (some seem to think Matt LeBlanc could be the solo main host), but this is certainly a popular opinion!
Give challenges a proper back story
“That Reliant Robin [actually Realtos, if you want to be pedantic!] challenge was pointless. It had no reason to be done, that’s why it was boring,” says CTzen Agustín J. Ruatta, and we have to agree. It wasn’t ever properly explained why Evans and LeBlanc were driving around in these cars - one minute we were in the studio, the next we were watching this dull and unimaginative segment.
Team up for the challenges
There isn’t a whole lot of chemistry between the presenters right now, but that’s to be expected - watch back some of the really early episodes of 2002 onwards Top Gear when Clarkson, Hammond and May were first brought together, and you’ll find the three are all a bit wooden when interacting with each other.
However, an interesting way of spicing things up might be for the six presenters to split into two groups of three for some of the challenges. More screen time for those who deserve it, and an interesting dynamic we never saw pre-presenter change.
Rip it up and start again
This is the one we agree with most. So far the show has felt like a missed opportunity to completely reinvent something which was starting to feel tired under Clarkson, Hammond and May. Simply doing the same sort of things - right down to Evans seemingly imitating Clarkson’s intro voiceover style - with a new bunch of people is going to feel odd, and lead people to making unfavourable comparisons with the version of the show presented by those three.
In the week leading up to the first episode, Chris Evans said “If you’re changing the presenter line up completely, that’s pretty much change enough…It wasn’t broken, so why would we change it that much?” Sorry Chris, we disagree - there are plenty of reasons why it needs to be changed. It’s not too late though, so we can hold out hope…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Actually Rialtos, if you want to be even more pedantic!
also the whole, “we got custody of The Stig” thing made me cringe. like no lol, the BBC holds the copyright to The Stig -_-
IMO they should of sold Stig to Amazon, watching the ‘some say’ part was awful.
I think one of the coolest things the BBC could have done is embraced a worldwide online platform that they’ve been trying to do for an age now but make it a very tight production on a slightly smaller but more creative scale. Taking on Chris Harris was good move but I think they should have given him a decent budget, The Stig and the creative freedom to do his thing but collaborate with people like you guys at Car Throttle, folks like Jay Leno, and then drivers like Sabine to create more concise entertaining car content and open up smaller online communities to the more general viewing public! Smaller online segments on iPlayer would be great and then pulling a bigger group of car nuts together for a special exciting road trip together would have been brilliant! Imagine Alex in a 2017 GTR vs Chris Harris in RWD a delivery van vs The Stig on a bicycle to deliver pizzas as fast as possible! What a mental challenge!
I got tickets to episode 3’s recording which happened yesterday. I did not like episode one but episode 3 is definitely one to watch. Its got a long Chris Harris film on the F12 tdf which is like his youtube stuff but with even better production value. Rory Reid had a full piece as well on hot hatches and we finally see Ken Block blasting through London. Chris Evans didn’t shout at us (the crowd) and felt like he was trying to dial it back a little (although I’d still rather have none of him at all)
This sounds like an episode i’d enjoy more. Than the first. If they take Chris Harris away from yt they better damn well use him properly
These are good suggestions but as we know the only true way to fix top gear is to get the old chaps back and why does it take six people to replace three middle aged men?
Damn good article I agree with absolutely everything 👌 just have to send that to the BBC now hahaha
Its all well and good saying we need more harris and reid but all of them are so PC they are terrified to form an opinion and it is just boring!! Chris harris almost sends me to sleep. Great if want to know facts and figures about a particular car but the fact of the matter is no one can afford what they have on the program and that is not what its about anyway.
Something to remember is that they have already done all the recordings for the season, I have no doubt that the top gear team will take our criticisms into consideration, but the only recordings they have to do are the actual studio segments, which are recorded on the wednesday before they air on sunday (i think).
what I’m saying is that the studio bits might get better, but the pre-recorded things probably wont until next season.
Omg Im famous😝
Rory said he’ll be in the third episode. I asked on facebook