Despite Mass Criticism, The First Episode Of ‘New’ Top Gear Was Officially A Hit
It’s pretty clear from the reactions on our live discussion that most of you guys didn’t really take to the first episode of new Top Gear. In fact, the poll we ran yesterday revealed that a whopping 24 per cent of you scored the episode as a 1 out of 10…
Twitter seemed full to the brim with complaints, too, while reviews have been less than favourable. However, in terms of raw numbers, the first episode was actually a hit.
In a series of Tweets, host Chris Evans revealed that the show enjoyed a massive 23 per cent audience share, representing a 12 per cent increase on the first episode of series 22 when the show was still presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May.
The caveat here is that the intrigue surrounding just what the show would be like in the post-Clarkson era will have no doubt fuelled the apparent popularity; the acid test will be the figures for the second and third episodes. However, it seems people weren’t switching off, because the audience actually grew throughout the airing. Evans also revealed this morning that iPlayer views have topped one million.
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
How do you expect Top Gear to be successful if Joey’s always stuck in Second Gear?
Haha brilliant!
Sick reference bro
Yeah, like Clarkson would ever have to tweet such s###.I mean stats!
being in the us without the BBC America tv channel, how can i view it?
same way as the other half of the planet, you download it.
I honestly thought it was pretty good, or at least way better than expected. Everything was still there: it had comedy, great cars, awesome videography, the challenges I thought were sub-par, but at least the star in a reasonably priced rallyX car was cool! I think the hosts just need some getting used too, and Chris Evans needs to try a bit less hard to be like the old hosts. Once the Grand Tour comes on maybe people will stop being salty about Clarkson and friends not being on TV.
That ‘caveat’ is exactly right. Of course a lot of people watched it! It’s the first episode in the attempt to salvage the Top Gear brand - people were curious as to how bad Chris Evans would actually be.
What Evans would be far better noting is that the most of people and critics who watched it thought it failed abysmally to provide any entertainment. No joke, I’m convinced there must have been a dozen people in the audience who could have done a better job than Evans had he suddenly taken sick and they were collared into doing it at a moments notice - Alistair Brownlee, anyone!
He obviously is also aware of the criticism, going by his insistence on ‘THE FACTS’. I wonder will be drop his ego enough to listen to it.
Well most of us “old TopGear fans” were curious to see if you “new TopGear folks” could do something good with the show and you completely trashed it, it was not a good show and that is a FACT.
No, no no these are not “Facts” people where just curious about the new series. Not until about 4 episodes will we get an idea of REAL FACTS
Even in his tweets Chris is shouting, and that’s a FACT!
How expected of Evans to use caps lock in his tweets. This guy really needs to stop shouting.
It was succsessful because all the top gear fans were curious about the new show.( How they ruined it) The next episode will be watch by noone.