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
No one likes Chris Evans, not even Chris Evans likes Chris Evans.
Agree with the feedback. Evans was trying too hard. The shouting and attempts at crowd engagement were cringe worthy. Segments were terrible - the reliant robin piece made me want to poke my eyes out with a fork. Chris Evans on Extra Gear was the only highlight for me though I will miss his YouTube channel alot. I can’t see the show lasting more than a season without significant changes in format and personnel.
Am I the only one who likes Evans?
yes
Yes
Hey, my suggestion made it in the list!
They said that the corvette and the viper were muscle cars. I thought they were sports car?
Yeah that bothered me too
Even though you are right both cars heritage started with muscle cars that have transitioned into almost a sub category of a muscle sports car.
Get rid of Evans and make Matt, Harris, and Reid the top presenters. I also think they signed all these people so when they get public feedback they will let go who they need too and have everyone else they want to keep already locked into contract
I like it the way it is. And It’ll change. Remember the first season of “New Top Gear” That aired 2002? (There was a Top Gear before that actually) Well, the guy doing that used car thing was there, it was nothing like the later Seasons and May was also not introduced. It was even worse than the first episode of this season 23 of “Top Gear (2002)” (as it should be called) and the Top Gear with the three, Clarkson, Hammond and May was very different from the old Top Gear before that. People were complaining then, too. But it got great. I’ll give those guys now at least two seasons to see what they can make of it, get to know each others quirks and strengths to build up on that. Also I quite like Evans, he is the perfect polar opposite to Matt LeBlanc.
What I’d do is fire ALL of them and hire Tim, Sam, Paul, James and Seb (the YouTube crew) and get them to present it instead
#8
How about a Stig and Schmitz sex tape to spice things up
So can we all agree that the show would be best with Chris h, Matt and Rory on the main show and have the other presenters can do all the small boring segments. Like have Chris Evans do the star in the reasonably priced car segment. His extra energy should even out the dullness and repition. And have the new girl do competitions with the stig since she is so good at driving.