Top Gear, episode one, review: the boys are back with bromance, banter and breathtaking stunts
“What am I doing here… I’ve got an MBE!”
As he said this, former England cricket captain Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff was strapped into a creaking Rover Metro suspended above a dam in Switzerland. It was coming to the end of the first episode of the new season of Top Gear (BBC Two) and so a big set piece was called for.
But there’s big and then there’s a one-time elite sportsman watching his life flash by from the driver seat of an affordable runabout. He looked genuinely, certifiably terrified at the conclusion of this solid and sometimes spectacular series opener. And that was just when he was required to laugh at co-presenter Chris Harris’s jokes.
All the talk was of a new “Woke Gear” when the man-hugging duo of Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness arrived as hosts last year. They, and the returning Harris, were regarded as a great leap forward from the rustbucket Jeremy Clarkson era. And true enough, they moisturise, wear product in their hair and are less likely to lie awake at night working through a burning dislike of Greta Thunburg.
But in several key aspects the new Top Gear has proved conspicuously faithful to the old. Banter and bromance continue to eclipse the dreary business of speaking knowledgeably about cars. That familiar reliance on set-pieces and gimmicks endures (though the celebrity interviews in the studio are gone). The major break with the past, when it comes to it, is a ruthless culling of the traditional TG denim.
Last season went off hitch-free and ratings have held reasonably firm. And so, the BBC has decided to crank out more of the same. The latest series began with the usual grand road trip organised around a back-of-beer mat premise. This time the idea was to deliver a Valentine to the great British summer holiday as the gang set off from Bognor Regis in clapped out convertibles.
Challenges along the way included driving around a dirt track as “cattle lubricant” was sprayed in their faces. Cue loads of “lube” gags that were slightly risqué pre-watershed. Later, they had to zoom over a mud-flat. In between Harris reviewed what looked like an oversized Scalextric car. It cost £40,000 and didn’t have a windscreen, let alone a stereo or Bluetooth. Naturally he loved it.
It felt like Top Gear on cruise control. But the hour was rescued by the genuinely impressive finale in which Flintoff and the Rover bungee jumped off 500-foot Luzzone dam. Visually it was breathtaking. And it continued to wow even as producers padded out the 62 minute run-time by showing the car tumble earthwards in both slow motion and at normal speed, and from a variety of angles. The BBC hasn’t seen this much milking since Countryfile last visited a dairy farm.
It’s just as well that Top Gear can still pull off blockbuster moments, because the presenters' chemistry didn’t always fire on every cylinder. Some of their interactions were painfully forced. Exiting Bognor Regis, you could almost see McGuinness turning over the pages of his script as he banged on about the delights of Mr Whippy.
Clarkson’s Grand Tour has lately sputtered into the grass verges on Amazon Prime (downsized to a run of one-off “specials”). So it is an open question whether the public really has an appetite for three blokes-and-a-bonnet japery in 2020. Top Gear’s return nonetheless packed a serviceable punch. It was blokey, breezy and, lube jokes aside, largely unobjectionable. The show, for now, remains on the road.
