Here's Why Top Gear's Problems Don't Mean It'll Suck

You’ve almost got to feel sorry for Chris Evans. The man is under immense pressure after taking over presenting Top Gear from Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, and by the sounds of it, it’s all going terribly at the moment. To cut a long story short, Evans already crashed a car, some high ranking staff have left, other staff don’t know about cars, and the overly-paranoid BBC won’t leave him alone to make the show.

This news was, predictably, met with quite a bit of joy from the old TG faithful, who believe nothing could ever live up to what the three wise men - well, two wise men and Jeremy - offered up. But it’s not really fair, nor is it justifiable, to slate the new car show before it’s begun. It’s having teething problems, but let’s wait until we’ve seen an episode before we pass judgement.

Making a television show is a long and complicated process, and there are a lot of factors that must align for a show to be great. The team working on Top Gear is almost entirely new, and like in any other walk of life, when you throw a group of people together, there will be personality clashes. There will also be disagreements about which direction is best for the show to succeed. The restructuring that appears to be taking place right now is likely just a natural evolution of personnel.

It’s important to remember that all of this mirrors what happened when Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman started putting together a revamped Top Gear all those years ago. Anyone who’s read former script editor Richard Porter’s book will know that that show had its fair share of problems. In the end, the pilot episode was an absolutely huge failure, and the first episodes only just fell together. And even they suffered personnel issues, with presenters not working out just one of the myriad problems faced by the crew.

So if Clarkson’s efforts also started out by looking like a failure, there’s no reason to think that Evans and friends won’t be able to turn their effort around as well. And let’s be honest, if the rumours are true that Chris Harris will be getting on board then we know that it has a great chance of doing exactly that.

Chris Evans has said in the past that he doesn’t want to try to copy what the old show did, and instead he’s going to make it all about cars again. Harris would be the perfect man to help him do that, by bringing a fun personality with geeky knowledge and insane talent behind the wheel to the show.

And then there are the rumours about Sabine Schmitz and David Coulthard, who might not quite have Harris’ bubbly personality, but also bring incredible knowledge and talent to the offering.

It’ll be fascinating to see what they all come up with. The first series will likely be a bit of a mashup of styles as they all find their feet, but don’t write them off just yet. It won’t be Top Gear as we know it, but that’s what the Amazon Prime thing is for. It might actually be quite nice to have Top Gear focusing on the cars again…