Transcription
When Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May left Top Gear in 2015, it marked the end of a golden era for the BBC. Overnight, one of its flagship properties became rudderless and destined to fail. The trio's departure was triggered by Clarkson's infamous scrap with a producer over a catering dispute and other issues building behind the scenes, leading the BBC to refuse to renew his contract. Out of loyalty and solidarity, Hammond and May followed him overboard, ending a partnership that transformed a niche motoring show into one of the most successful TV programs in the world.
If you want to find out the full story, you can watch this video that I made about the entire debacle. In the immediate aftermath of Clarkson's dismissal, the BBC scrambled to save Top Gear. Their solution was to appoint radio and TV presenter Chris Evans as the new lead host. Although Chris is featured as a guest multiple times on Prime Top Gear and has a great love for cars, it was a weird choice, as the lanky ginger also had a reputation for being difficult to work with.
To bolster the new lineup, the BBC also brought in former Friends star Matt LeBlanc. Why? No one really seems to know. But alongside Matt would also be pro racing driver Sabine Schmidt, and Chris Harris, car journalist Rory Reed, and motoring expert Eddie Jordan. The latter four being logical choices. The idea was to create an ensemble cast that could appeal to a wide audience—essentially meaning they no longer had the original trio, so they had to make up chemistry and personality in the aggregate. Unfortunately, the chemistry never materialized. Chris Evans' abrasive style clashed with LeBlanc's laid-back demeanor. Meanwhile, the new hosts struggled to build a rapport, and viewers immediately sensed the lack of authenticity and camaraderie that had defined the previous team.
The ratings told the story. The Evans and LeBlanc Top Gear made its appearance in May 2016, pulling in 4.4 million viewers—down significantly from the 5.8 million viewers who tuned into Clarkson's final episode. Over the course of the 23rd series, ratings steadily dropped, reaching a low point of 1.9 million viewers. The critical reception was also brutal. Many fans accused the new version of Top Gear of trying too hard, lacking the genuine enthusiasm that made the show so beloved. Chris Evans, in particular, faced a tsunami of hate for his loud, shouty presenting style, which many found grating and unfunny. "Why did they have to pick this as the main presenter?" "His voiceovers are painful on the ears." "I loved how the cinematography is the same, but the voiceover by Evans ruins it." "I know the old Top Gear was scripted, but this is so much more obvious; they don't even try to hide it; every word out their mouths is read straight from a piece of paper or from a teleprompter."
With the Chris Evans hate trending worldwide, it led to Americans wondering why everyone hated Captain America. But to make it even worse, tabloid rumors of behind-the-scenes tensions between Chris and Matt further poisoned the chalice. One producer even allegedly left Top Gear because of Chris's tyrannical manner. It was a complete and utter [ __ ] show, quite literally. By the end of the first season after the relaunch, after just six episodes, Evans stepped down from Top Gear via a tweet, stating, "Stepping down from Top Gear. Gave it my best shot, but sometimes that's not enough. The team are beyond brilliant. I wish them the best."
This would lead to a reshuffling of the presenter lineup once more, with Matt LeBlanc continuing to present the show with Rory Reed and Chris Harris, streamlining the lineup into a more focused trio. However, while fun in places, once again it didn't really work. While watchable and having individual talent amongst the team, it lacked the natural spark. Top Gear was having a full-blown identity crisis; it forgot that it was never a car show but rather an entertainment show that just happened to be about cars, and their return to a slightly more serious tone alienated fans who wanted humor and adventure. So when you sack the original trio, you're always going to be fighting an uphill battle for acceptance, no matter the quality. And not only that, by this point, Clarkson, Hammond, and May quickly moved on to create The Grand Tour for Amazon, offering audiences exactly what they loved, just with a bigger budget and with fewer restrictions—presumably you're doing more, cuz The Grand Tour has been a huge success.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how thrilled are you that Top Gear is nowhere near as successful now that you're not on it? It's a hard face to pull this one; let me try. Cuz the other guys are always very generous and always saying, "Yeah, James and Richard always, you know, it's a shame; we wish them all the…" I don't… No, I do.
In a bid to get some life back into a dying corpse, the BBC rebranded Top Gear once again, announcing former cricketer Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff and comedian Paddy McGuinness to the lineup alongside Chris Harris on the 16th of June 2019. The new version of Top Gear aired, with many feeling like it was injected with a fresh energy. Flintoff's natural charisma and daredevil spirit brought a new dynamic, and for a while, it seemed like Top Gear had stabilized. During the regular seasons, they managed to maintain a strong average of between 4.4 and 4.8 million and seeing heights of over 5 million for his Nepal special. Despite this return in viewership, this was all about to come crashing down.
On the 13th of December 2022, the final blow to Top Gear was about to be given. Heartbreakingly, in the face of tragedy, towards the end of a shoot day at Dunsfold airfield, Freddie was instructed to drive a Morgan Three-Wheeler, which are notoriously weird cars to drive. Freddie set off without wearing a helmet, and horrifically, while driving at 45 mph, one of the wheels came off the car, leading the vehicle to flip and Flintoff to suffer severe facial injuries and broken ribs. After being in agony for about half an hour, Fred was airlifted to St George's Hospital in London, where he was rushed into theatre to be immediately operated on by top facial surgeon Jared Hack, who had said that Freddie had sustained some of the worst injuries he had seen in his 20-year career. "I thought I was dead because I was conscious and I couldn't see anything. I was thinking, 'Is that it? Just black for the rest of my days.' My hat came over my eyes, so I pulled my hat up and I thought, 'No, I'm not dead; I'm on the Top Gear track; this is not heaven.' I thought my face had come off; I was frightened to death."
On the 24th of March 2023, Top Gear went into a definite hiatus. "Under the circumstances, we feel it would be inappropriate to resume making series 34. We have sincerely apologized to Freddie and will continue to support him with his recovery. We understand that halting the show will be disappointing for fans, but it's the right thing to do, and will now make the judgment about how best to continue later this year." On an independent health study and safety review, which looked at previous seasons and didn't even include Flintoff's crash, concluded that while BBC Studios had complied with the required BBC policies and industry best practices in making this show, there were important learnings which would need to be rigorously applied to future Top Gear productions.
In June 2023, James May was asked his thoughts on the crash during an interview. "I'd like to say, as I'm sure a lot of people have said, 'Oh, I wasn't surprised when I heard,' they have, but actually I was surprised because Dunsfold is a remarkably safe place to drive around; there isn't really anything to hit. And you know, they do take all the safety and stuff very seriously; they even have fire agents on standby and ambulances and things at Dunsfold, so I… it's all a bit of a tragedy, and it's… it's obviously… it's obviously much worse than we first thought. The one thing I would say is there's a… I've noticed this on Twitter a bit; it's died down a bit now, but for a while there were people saying, 'Oh, you know, Top Gear's ended cuz Freddie Flintoff bashed himself up, and why don't you three go back and rescue it,' and say… And I wanted to say to people, 'Look, the bloke's hurt himself.' It's not an opportunity for you to gloat or say, 'Oh, I prefer the other team.' You could possibly just say, I don't know, 'Get well, Freddie,' or something nice like that, you know, rather than rejoicing in it, because um… yeah, I mean, it's a while since it happened, and he's obviously still not completely better, so it's not like my tunnel crash, which, you know, a couple of weeks later I was okay. Lasting damage—that's obviously something a lot more serious, so good luck to him."
In November of the same year, the BBC revealed that Top Gear wouldn't be returning for the foreseeable future, stating, "The BBC remains committed to Freddie, Chris, and Paddy, who have been at the heart of the show's renaissance since 2019, and we're excited about new projects being developed with each of them. We know resting the show will be disappointing news for fans, but it's the right thing to do. All other Top Gear activity remains unaffected by this hiatus, including international formats, digital magazines, and licensing."
In the aftermath of the crash, Freddie's life changed forever, both physically and mentally, noting that he didn't leave his house for a year after the crash. As a result, this led him to reach a settlement with the BBC, paying the former cricketer £9 million amid accusations of negligence. Thankfully, this huge payout wasn't funded by the TV license fee, as BBC Studios is a commercial arm of the broadcaster.
On the 5th of September 2024, Chris Harris appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast, where he spoke publicly for the first time about Freddie's incident. "I've never really spoken about it, cuz I… I keep my mouth shut; I like to remain dignified. It's been… it's quite a journey; it's come to an end now; I really feel it's a full stop. The show has been put on hold in the UK indefinitely—is the… is the terminology from the BBC—that means it's an end, but strangely it exists in other formats around the world. There's… there's been an American one; there's one in Finland; there's one in Australia; there's one in France, so that the license and the brand exists elsewhere, but not at its home in the UK. And it came to an end for me one day in December 2022, in a way that I'd like to say I hadn't expected, but… but I had, and I think that's the bit that I found very difficult to deal with over the last couple of years. The accident that… that my friend Andrew had… I won't go into too much cuz it's… it's sort of out there what happened. He rolled a Morgan three-wheeler; he wasn't wearing a crash helmet, and if you do that at even at 25, 30 mph, the injuries that you sustain are profound. I was there on the day; I was the only presenter with Fred that day; I wasn't actually right by him, but I was close by. I remember the radio message that I heard; I always used to have a radio in my little room at the test track where I was sitting inside so I could hear what's going on, and I heard someone say, 'This… there's been a real accident here; the car's upside down.' So I ran to the window, looked out, and he wasn't moving, so I thought he was… I thought he was dead; I assumed he was. Then he moved. I can tell you now that he… unless he… he's a physical specimen, Fred; he's a big guy, 6'5", 6'6", strong; if he wasn't so strong he wouldn't have survived. He's a… he's a great advert for physical strength and conditioning, cuz if he hadn't been that strong, he would have just snapped his neck; he'd be dead. That moment of realization that he'd survived has kind of defined my thoughts on the subject since, cuz I believe that anything after that is a bit of a bonus, you know? He should be dead really, and the fact that he survived it is remarkable and has given him and his family a chance to move on under very difficult circumstances. So that day was very difficult, um… made even more difficult by the fact that the buildup to that particular shoot, at the last minute, I knew we were using a Morgan three-wheeler; it's a very… it's a difficult car, you know? It's… by just the name tells you; physics is complicated; it doesn't mean it's inherently dangerous; you just drive it according to what it is; you have to be aware of its limitations, and I think that really was difficult, and you need experience. There were two people that had driven a Morgan three-wheeler before, present that day, me and someone else, a pro driver, and we were sitting inside at that time; no one had asked us anything about the car; they just gone on and shot it without us, and I think if I'm looking in the mirror, I find it very difficult, even now, that Andrew, who… who I loved to bits—a lovely man; he was a pro cricket player; he wasn't an automotive guy, but he was a real enthusiast; he was great; much like you, he'd love cars; he would always come up to me before a shoot and say, 'Tell me how it is, you know? I've… I've got all the advice; give me the last bit of advice on what I should do, what I should expect.' Because of the call times that day, that was the first time we'd never had the chance to talk about how he might approach a difficult vehicle, and that was the one day that it went wrong. I find that very difficult to live with, and I feel partly responsible because I didn't get the chance to talk to him, but my situation is nothing compared to his. The bit that I find really difficult is that in the aftermath of that accident, the show was put on hold; Andrew had to recover from frankly awful injuries and has done so, but… profound injuries. We all kept quiet; we said nothing; and I… I said nothing because I wanted to look after him; it wasn't my story, was it? I was caught up in the collateral damage; I lost my job immediately cuz um… they canceled the show, and my contract was up, so suddenly I haven't got a job, but again you look in the mirror, and I think I'm alive; I've got three beautiful children; I'm not in Fred's position, and I just sort of got my head down."
In the same interview, Chris detailed that 3 months prior to the crash he warned the BBC that there were dangerous practices going on and that someone could die. "But I had seen this coming. There was a big inquiry; a lot of soul-searching—the BBC's good at that—but what was never spoken about was that 3 months before the accident I'd gone to the BBC and said, 'Unless you change something, someone's going to die on this show.' So I went to them; I went to the BBC, and I told them of my concerns from what I'd seen as someone as the most experienced driver on the show by a mile. I said, 'If we carry on, at the very least we're going to have a serious injury; at the very worst we're going to have a fatality.'" He also mentioned how this iteration of Top Gear was always trying to compete and up the stakes of the incredibly well-funded Grand Tour. "There was a bit of an arms race between us and maybe the other big car show, The Grand Tour, at the time, to go ever more stupid, and we did some… we did do some big stunts, and a lot of the time… and The Grand Tour's… the original cast Top Gear, Jeremy Cloffs and Richard May in their Amazon show, which sadly they've just ended—great show… um… James May, sorry… yeah, yeah… I'm… I'm not of the health and safety world; I'm not risk-averse; I love a bit of risk, and I also absolutely believe that if you enter into a show like Top Gear, you know what you're taking on. I… I believe that you… there is no such thing as great risk-free television like that. What happened with Top Gear was I saw repeatedly, too many times, my two co-hosts who didn't have the experience I had in cars—this is the critical thing; I'm qualified to make those decisions cuz I've done it a long time; they weren't… they… One of them is an active comedian; the other guy is a pro cricket player; brilliant entertainers; they were great hosts, but their roles were to make people laugh, and my role was to tell people what cars were like, and all too often towards the… in the last year I saw situations where it got too dangerous. So anyhow, I went to the BBC and I said, 'I want to have a meeting with the head of health and safety because this is not good.' What's really killed me is that no one's ever really acknowledged the fact that I called it beforehand. It's very difficult to live with that. Initially, for me, when I knew, I thought I'd done the right thing; I'm not very good at that; I normally just go with the flow, but I saw this coming; I thought I did the right thing; I went to the BBC, and I found out really that no one had taken me very seriously. I did a bit of digging afterwards; the conversation I had with those people was sort of acknowledged, then they tried to sort of shut me down a bit, and then they didn't look after me at all; they just sort of left me to rot. And I even now I'm totally perplexed by the whole thing—to actually say to an organization, 'This is going to go wrong,' and then be there the day that it goes wrong is a position I never expected to be in, and I never want to be in again. To sweat, really… I just didn't really… I just sat in my… where I live and drank whiskey; I… I didn't have much contact with them at all; everything went quiet; they had two inquiries into the accident commissioned, neither of which I had access to; I pushed very hard to have access to the second one and saw some of it, and I had this… this is one of the most bizarre interactions I've had; I sat down with someone from the BBC who was going to talk me through bits of the second inquiry into the accident, and I'd already been told that I no longer had a job, so I'd been told that Top Gear was done, and at the beginning of it he said to me—I won't name him—he said, 'Want to thank you so much for taking part in this cuz it's really going to help us as an organization going forwards.' I said, 'Well, doesn't really help me; I've lost my job.'"
Such a [ __ ] shame, because Top Gear was never the same after the OG trio, but Chris Harris is legitimately awesome. The internet is brutal sometimes, unfortunately. Chris Harris deserves his own show, but not Top Gear; people will never stop complaining and comparing Chris to the trio.
In 2025, years after the crash, Freddie did a series of interviews leading up to the release of his new Disney Plus documentary detailing the traumatic experience and how it affected him. "We all heard about the Top Gear accident; this was back in 2022, I think, and just an awful accident; I mean, just an enormous life-changing accident, so just to get over that and to get out the other side is an incredible achievement. When you look back now from a different perspective, what do you make of what happened? Yeah, it happened; no… no secret that I, you know, had a car accident filming Top Gear, and then afterwards, obviously there's the physical scars which I've got, but then the mental side of it as well, so I… I didn't leave the house for probably 6, 8 months, and the only times I was leaving the house was when for medical appointments or surgeries, and then afterwards a mate of mine, Rob Key, who's actually my boss—known him for 30 years—he started inviting me to come and watch the cricket test matches, but sit in like a back room, not in the crowd, cuz I wore a full face mask for… for months, and I started getting back into it; started to find my feet a little bit again. So for me, cricket, ever since I can remember, from being a kid, been a massive part of my life, but at that time when I probably needed it most, cricket embraced me again, and I found myself back in it, and now, you know, the TV stuff was good; I'll still do the odd job; I've got bills to pay, but cricket now, back in coaching and working with these lads, is my definite future, and I'm… I'm loving it."
In the documentary, Freddie details how he feels bad for altering the careers of both Paddy and Chris, admitting he hasn't seen Paddy for 2 years. "I feel bad; I haven't been in more contact with Chris and Paddy; part of it is for myself a little bit; I hate the word triggering, but I'm worried about that."
During an interview with The Times in 2025, Clarkson commented that Top Gear is needed now more than ever. "It would be sad if it never came back; that would be very sad. There's room for a car program at the moment because cars are changing so fast, and electrical cars are coming along, and no one really understands what a good one is and what isn't."
Today, Top Gear exists as more of a legacy brand than a living, breathing TV show. Classic episodes featuring the original trio remain hugely popular on streaming platforms, and the brand maintains a strong social media presence through the Top Gear website and YouTube channel, offering car reviews and short-form content. In the end, Top Gear didn't die because of one bad host or one bad series; it became clear that without the trio who created entertainment through their unique prism of chemistry, it simply wasn't Top Gear anymore. You set everyone up for failure, no matter who you cast or how great you make the show. Whether or not the BBC ever tries to revive it in the future, the golden years of Top Gear will likely remain a high watermark in entertainment history.
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