- Joined
- Mar 7, 2016
This show is an absolute cringe fest, and a 60 minute car crash. Matt LeBlanc can't present for toffee, and Evans just just cringeworthy around any celebrity within 20 feet of him. Most of the much vaunted presenter line up was shunted elsewhere or otherwise made irrelevant.
There's no chemistry and thus no soul for this show and it won't be long before the BBC chops it.
There's no chemistry and thus no soul for this show and it won't be long before the BBC chops it.
I actually tried to go into this a little more open minded than I had been initially, the new line up, while heavy actually looked mildly promising.
It featured the talents of Sabine Schmit, a woman who is the Queen of the German Nurburgring and is one of the main presenters on the German Version of Top Gear, and Eddie Jordan, a former Formula One team boss and Presenter. This helped improve the cred for fans who really wanted to watch a car show.
For the entertainment side, two youtubers were plucked from the net; Chris Harris from ChrisHarrisonCars and some spots on FifthGear and Rory Reid of Recombucars, the latter admitting he modelled himself, as a black Jeremy Clarkson.
And then the “star power” Chris Evans who is a wildly successful and veteran TV and radio presenter and Matt LeBlanc, a notorious american gearhead who found a revived career on this side of the pond after things stalled when Joey got cancelled.
Even if the rumours came off as maybe modelling itself after other wildly successful “magazine” format programs such as The One Show (Current affairs and soft stories) and Countryfile (Agricultural, nature and environmental affairs) maybe, just maybe something new and good could come about….
But that’s not what we got.
Tonight’s episode could only honestly be described as cringe-laden ego-fest for Chris Evans, who desperately tries to pretend he is all three former presenters at once.
He barks and screams like Clarkson when he slams his foot leadenly on an accelerator, he waffles about the technological side like May and he tries, when talking normally, to bring the cheek and charm of Hammond.
The result is a weird mess in which none of the fun or charm of any kind comes forward, you’re just reminded endlessly that he’s trying to condense three men into one.
LeBlanc… is also sadly bland, while Evans bounces around and ad-libs, LeBlanc is stuck awkwardly standing and zoning out (like actors do when they think there’s no camera on them) and reads all his lines from an autocue very poorly indeed. There’s no wiggle room, no natural and easy joking with Evans but a rigid forumla of two people on camera who clearly have no cameraderie
This carries over into LeBlanc’s presenting in the items he’s made to do, where his rigidity and blatantly written for him jokes when he’s recording afterwards are in vast contrast to the more relaxed “in the moment” he’s allowed to be when he’s out and driving live.
Some things make a welcome return. Star in the reasonably priced car has seen the track add in a small off road section, which provides a welcome change. The problem comes with the absolute luvie-love in cringe fest that appears when the famous walk on.
This is when the cringe-fest comes to absolutely hideous levels, there’s no structure to the interview and on this first one, the stars (Gordon Ramsey and Jessie Eisenberg) were reading out from an auto-cue of what each other were doing. No structure, no natural flow and a rather obvious lack of laughter from the audience as this dragged on increasingly awkwardly. There was no soft promotion, no asking what was likely to be next for them or even a funny story, it was a void of awkward cringe.
The one saving grace is the new set design, it’s modern, sleek, different but still has the nods such as the seating sets and a new, large screen covers an entire wall of the studio to make it easier for people to watch the stars do their laps as well as other items from the broadcast.
So, what of the exciting new lineup of presenters? Uh. Well.
They don’t exist.
Evans and LeBlanc are the only people seemingly allowed an actual presenting role on the show, and to do challenges and car reviews. Sabine (herself a TV presenter and driver) is reduced to one item in which she appears purely because she’s a fast driver, and Eddie Jordan is nowhere to be seen.
As for the two new presenters? Roy Reid and Chris Harris? They’ve been bundled off to a BBC Three Online-only show called Extra Gear which nobody is likely to watch instead of being able to create a chemistry and heaven forbid, some actual entertaining content.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a showreel of Rory.
