Why Sunday’s Top Gear Was The Most Haggard Episode Ever

Sunday’s Top Gear was the worst ever, because it was more predictable than a Christmas pantomime. Don’t jump straight to the comments to argue just yet – hear me out and then see if you dare disagree that TG was an embarrassment this week.

Every Top Gear episode worthy of the name should have a track-based power test in it, but as soon as they start going off down the ‘old cars are more fun than new cars’ blind alley it’s going to be a long night. And so it was with Porsche 991 vs Singer 911, just as it was with Shelby GT500 vs Mustang GT390, or Ferrari 599 GTB vs 275 GTS. Oh, and no, there’s no way James May was driving those lairy oversteer shots. I couldn’t quite tell if it had been deliberately badly edited to dupe viewers into thinking May is a drift king though. Maybe it was an accident.

Ah yes, the Porsche 911. Shall we play Top Gear Predictable Porsche Joke Bingo? Points for ‘engine in the wrong place’, ‘they’re all the same’, ‘engineering their way around the problem’ and not forgetting Jeremy pulling a HILARIOUS bored face while May and Hammond argue around their carefully script-... sorry, ad-libbed and natural routine.

So, onto the ‘news’. Watch enough Top Gear and you expect a cringeworthy sort-of stand-up performance with a few sexual innuendos, gay jokes, and a not-at-all recycled from four series ago ‘good news!’ Dacia joke. Check, check, and check. Sunday had all of ‘em, and it ain’t getting any funnier.

Of course, the atypical TG show has a ludicrously fast and expensive car tested during its 58 minutes. At £2m and 2.5sec 0-62mph, the Lambo Sesto Elemento fitted the bill. In an exclusive world-first for TV test, at Imola, it had the makings of one of the all-time great Top Gear test films, like JC in the Ariel Atom, or James’ Honda FCX Clarity review. Instead, we got five minutes of Richard Hammond wooping and reading stats from a press sheet. We get it’s an overwhelming piece of kit but ‘it feels alive’ is hardly the most original journalistic observation known to man. ‘Waaahaaahahahaa’ isn’t either.

With that, ‘back to the studio’ (another oft-regurgitated TGism) for the most tired part of the whole format: the ‘special’ guest. And what could be more up Top Gear’s street than an ageing rock star with worse dress sense than Clarkson? Jezza basically has a semi for anyone who appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine pre-1987, and yet again he was enjoying himself more than we were. And just to top it off, the guy who owns the world’s fastest Lotus tribute act turned out to be painfully slow in the Reasonably Priced PR Stunt.

Now come on, Top Gear. We’re 40 minutes in and you’ve been nothing but predictable, formulaic rubbish. Time to nail a quality adventure film and save the day. Don’t, for instance, pick on caravanners. No, we don’t like caravans either, but after you played conkers with them, took a holiday in one, played darts with them, built motorhomes to avoid them and raced them, it’s kind of all been done.

But no, we got a low-budget caravanning film, complete with a total shitcanning of the entire class of crossover 4x4s – the fastest growing car market in Europe, showing just how out of touch TG really is. What could be done to spice up the feature? How about classically predictable TG stereotypes yet again, like deliberate crashes, James May saying ‘oh cock’ and a dogging scene? That brought home an Emmy before, it’ll work again...

Most Top Gear shows have at least a few of these mannerisms kicking around, but cramming all of them into one turgid episode was quite some feat. It was even worse given the series so far (apart from the terrible hover-van waste of time) has been better than the last three seasons put together. Hammond’s hot hatch triple test was relevant, comprehensive and on the money, while Jezza’s SLS Electric versus Black Series was a great twin-test juxtaposition.

Plus, when they’re not ‘in character’, the TG boys have talent. Jeremy Clarkson’s Inventions That Changed The World series and Greatest Raid Of All/Victoria Cross: For Valour war documentaries are some of the finest BBC productions of the past decade, and I encourage you to seek them on YouTube. James May’s recent forays into science and tech have been an unqualified success, and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Richard Hammond’s meets with Sir Stirling Moss and Evel Knievel. And don’t forget script supremo Richard Porter, the comedic mind behind the most excellent sniffpetrol.com.

Yet all yesterday’s Top Gear episode did was scream ‘We Are Really Out Of Ideas This Time’, and that’s really no bombshell. The worst part is that millions of suckers like me tuned in to discover that at all.