A New-Look 'Top Gear' Looks to Leave Controversy In the Dust
BBC America’s Top Gear is a well-oiled machine: The network calls the car-loving reality series the “most-watched factual TV show in the world,” with 350 million (!) viewers across the globe. And now it’s looking to get a quick tune-up without losing any of its momentum.
Top Gear introduced its new host Chris Evans — no, not Captain America — at BBC America’s winter press tour today. Evans is looking to take the wheel of a show formerly hosted by the popular trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May, who all left after Clarkson was forced out by the BBC last March following a dust-up with a Top Gear producer and a string of controversies about racially insensitive comments. (The trio are launching a new car show this fall on Amazon.)
Evans is a Top Gear fan, first and foremost: “If the old show hadn’t been taken off, I’d be watching the new series with James, Richard, and Jeremy now. It was brilliant.” But he’s no slouch himself: Evans is a legendary TV and radio presenter in the U.K., and a car nut in his own right. (He writes a weekly car review column for London’s Daily Mail.) A promo reel screened for critics showed Evans getting his light red hair blown back while riding in some truly incredible automobiles.
Evans understands that Top Gear’s main attraction is watching amazing cars being put through their paces; the show’s popularity, he says, is “not based on a person; it’s based on those words: Top. Gear.” Cars are a vital part of everyone’s lives, he adds, from pushing around a toy car on the floor to your first driving experience to finding fun in a family car: “They’re sort of an unofficial diary to our lives.”
The new Top Gear will wisely retain many of the elements viewers love, Evans reassures us: “We’re definitely going to keep The Stig [the show’s anonymous test driver]. We’re definitely going to keep the stars. Hopefully, we’re going to have more stars. Bigger stars. Brighter stars.”
Production has already started on the new season of Top Gear; in fact, Evans was here in the U.S. filming his first road trip challenge on California’s Pacific Coast Highway — amid “s–tloads of rain, and a hailstorm… like Scotland.”
Evans has hosted many TV and radio programs over the years, and actually had to leave his previous gig, TFI Friday, to take the Top Gear job. But he won’t have any divided loyalties here, he says: “I’m fully focused on Top Gear. We’re six films in, and I’ve really enjoyed them.”
The new season of Top Gear premieres in May on BBC America.
