Video of the Week: EXTENDED Top Gear TV Trailer – Top Gear: Series 24 – BBC (by Top Gear)

Last series of Top Gear wasn’t met with a crowd of people wanting to see what the next adventure or challenge will be, but instead flocked towards each trailer or episode just to dislike and criticise. The final episode in series 23 only received a whimsical 1.9 million viewers on its first night, and whilst there would have been plenty more who would see it later on BBC iPlayer, the numbers didn’t go up that much.

Top Gear didn’t become the number one most watched factual show in the world because it showcased the latest car, but because people tuned in to see what shenanigans the three presenters, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May got up to each week. People associated them as Top Gear, not the cars anymore. I’m not going to get into the debate on whether who is right and who is wrong concerning the publicised matter between Jeremy and the producer, my focus is what the BBC did next with the show.

The BBC needed to pick the right people. It was only logical that some people would disagree with whoever they had picked, but more than who did would have agreed if they had picked the right people who would be able to handle the behemoth that is the biggest factual show in terms of how many countries it has been sold to. Over 130 million people on average per series sat down and watched the show each week.

Chris Evans tried to make the show his by changing a couple of things around, but ultimately failed spectacularly, and so left, and now the series is coming back some time this year, and I have to say that they have listened to the fans. The two presenters who were in charge of the small internet show on BBC Three, and were considered a very popular duo, Chris Harris and Rory Reid have been promoted to main presenters, whereas Matt Leblanc has stayed on, but is now head presenter. Whether you enjoyed him last series or not, it wouldn’t be fair to not give him a chance this series. With Matt being head presenter may change the show for the better.

It does need to be pointed out that, this trailer has gained a fair amount of dislikes, but has more likes than before, but to balance out the ratio between the two, it hasn’t gotten that many views compared to the previous trailer in the few days that it has been uploaded. Whether that’s because word hasn’t circulated as strong as before, or people are just avoiding it completely because they’ve lost faith, I for one am more optimistic of this new series than the last.

The BBC has been tackling financial cuts for a couple of years now, and so they won’t be able to assign as much money as they have done before, but from the looks of things, it does seem as if they have upped their game a bit. The narrative of the trailer was surprising, I will admit. It was in-keeping with the basic element of the show, which was people having fun without too much interest in the rules, and I did like Stig’s entrance at the very end.

Should the BBC have done this from the beginning? We don’t know yet, this is just the trailer, but the trailer does look like they should have done this before. Should the BBC have given up trying after the last series? No, I do think they can pull something out from under their sleeves, but they shouldn’t consider this to be a rival car show anymore. With the Grand Tour now finished, it does make sense that the BBC will show this otherwise no one will watch this if the Grand Tour was running parallel. The has to accept that the show won’t be as good as it was for a very long time to come. Trusts needs to be rebuilt for that to happen, and I do believe they tried too hard last series. This time, now it seems that they may have learnt from their mistakes.

We have to wait for the actual episodes before we can judge them properly. I am a little optimistic after seeing this series, and I will be given the first episode a try. When it does hit the TV, I’ll give my thoughts on it.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)