So now we know. The burning question on everyone's lips has finally been answered and the world can rest easy. No, not whether the Chinese stock market will be forced to devalue, or if the oil price will drop further – but who the new line-up of presenters are for the BBC motoring programme, Top Gear.
The show was launched way back in 1977, but once it began to be presented by the swaggering, freewheeling and culturally recherché Jeremy Clarkson it acquired a huge and loyal audience of people who liked seeing men driving and talking about fast cars, with little regard for political correctness or health and safety. The show’s breezy, anarchic recipe proved a winner, so much so that it has become one of the BBC’s most prolific exports and is seen all over the world.
But then in 2015 Clarkson, a man who’s never far from controversy, left the show after an unseemly dust-up in a hotel foyer with his producer, and in doing so took with him his two co-presenters, the impish Richard Hammond and the studiously rumpled James May. The powers that be at the BBC were left wringing their hands trying to decide whether to continue the show without their three stars, or call time on proceedings and start afresh.
We already knew they’d elected to continue, and that media celebrity Chris Evans was heading the revamped format. Evans, a savvy streetwise motormouth, may not yet be well known beyond the UK, but he is a canny broadcaster with a ready wit and with years of experience on live TV, and is certain to stamp his unique imprint on things.
But whereas the old Top Gear format had just three presenters, the BBC has filled the gap left by the old guard's exodus by hiring just about anyone who's ever driven a car. What else can explain the fact in addition to Evans, five other individuals are now on the starting grid where once they only needed three?
The new line-up includes female racing driver and speed queen Sabine Schmitz, YouTube star Chris Harris, Formula 1 pundit Eddie Jordan and motoring journalist Rory Reid. But perhaps the most surprising appointment is that of actor Matt LeBlanc. Leblanc is synonymous with the role of Joey in Friends; but whether his dramatic skills will extend to the different discipline of television presenting is yet to be tested.
Stepping into a giant’s shoes can be a daunting prospect, for however good you may be, you are invariably compared to the icons you are replacing and are often found wanting. It remains to be seen if Evans and co can rebuild the show in their own image.
Clarkson, Hammond and May, meanwhile, have not been idle, and lured by eye-watering sums on offer from Amazon Prime, are set to convene once more in a new programme that will surely replicate Top Gear under another name. Indeed, Hammond was spotted only this past week in London being filmed driving a Ford Mustang GT Coupe at high speed. The budget for each episode of the new Amazon show is rumoured to be £4.5 million (Dh23.9m)– nearly four times the sum available to Top Gear.
On the face of it, the tried and tested Clarkson and sidekicks should win the contest for viewers hands down over the BBC pretenders; and yet who knows? Now shorn of national exposure on free-to-air public television, maybe the gilded trio won't exert the same fascination as hitherto. As screenwriter William Goldman famously said, in showbiz – for that is what Top Gear is – nobody knows anything. Many a famous celebrity has seen their career inexplicably founder by moving to a different station.
As far as Clarkson is concerned, if LeBlanc can make the leap from sitcom to presenting, perhaps the great man may make a similar jump in reverse, should his career falter.
Just imagine Clarkson as Joey in a remake of Friends. Now there's a prospect to savour. Though, given his capacity for alienating people, he may have trouble finding five friends to act with.
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer in London
On Twitter: @michael_simkins
