Top Gear comes 'to rest' indefinitely
The BBC hasn't officially terminated its long-running TV show - but 'for the foreseeable future' it is no more
Top Gear, the pokey BBC motoring show that became a global phenomenon, has come ‘to rest’ after 46 years in the wake of Freddie Flintoff’s serious accident while filming at the Dunsfold test track last December. Given the extent of Flintoff’s injuries, it was widely thought very unlikely that the show would return in its current format; now, in a short statement released by the BBC today, it confirmed that Top Gear’s hiatus from TV screens would continue indefinitely.
"Given the exceptional circumstances, the BBC has decided to rest the UK show for the foreseeable future. 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 will have more to say in the near future on this. We know resting the show will be disappointing news for fans, but it is the right thing to do."
The announcement comes a little more than a month after BBC Studios reached a settlement with Flintoff to account for ‘his continued rehabilitation’ following the crash that required him to be airlifted to hospital. According to The Sun, the agreement was thought to be worth £9m. The commercial arm of the BBC has also recently concluded an independent health and safety review of the production, and while it found that the filming of the 34th series had complied with industry best practice, it suggested ‘there were important learnings’ that could be applied to shows in the future.
The BBC continues to describe ‘the rest’ as a hiatus - and confirmed that all other Top Gear-branded activities and licensed formats will continue unaffected - but it remains to be seen whether the TV show will return at all, and what format it will take if it does. While it has a history of highly publicised crashes (and subsequent brushes with health and safety investigations) the Top Gear brand itself has proven remarkably adaptable, despite suffering mishaps that might have caused less popular shows to cease production for good.
It was a decline in viewing figures that spelt the end for the original show, which started broadcasting in 1977 and was cancelled in 2001 before being relaunched a year later by Andy Wilman and Jeremy Clarkson as a (partly) studio-based concept. By 2003, and the (re)introduction of James May, the format had found its feet and thanks to a penchant for ever-larger stunts - and the appearance of ever-bigger celebrities - it achieved an unlikely global following and was considered one of the Corporation’s most prized commercial assets.
This came to an abrupt halt in 2015 following the termination of Clarkson’s contract (and the subsequent departure of Hammond, May and Wilman) after physical abuse was reported. All found highly lucrative work elsewhere, while the BBC tried (and failed) to find workable replacements. It finally found what it thought were suitable comic foils for Chris Harris’s PH-honed gifts in 2019, when Andrew Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness were brought on board. But now, and very sadly for all those involved, the revamp of the revamp of the revamp ends here. PH wishes everyone affected by the news all the best in their future endeavours - and the BBC’s statement suggests we’ll be seeing plenty of Freddie, Chris and Paddy - although only time will tell if Top Gear has found its final cog.
Photo of FF seems to show pretty clearly that he suffered serious (at least) facial injuries. I had no idea it was so bad....
£9M settlement though? - I guess they'll be launching even more investigations into me now, with that to recoup from somewhere other than licence fee income...
".......Flintoff recently reached a settlement with the BBC, reportedly worth £9m. The payout will not be funded by the TV licence fee, as BBC Studios is a commercial arm of the broadcaster........"
But the premium will be getting hiked for sure...
I've just signed up to Discovery+ so I can keep track of everything going on at the Smallest Cog.
It became entertainment not a light entertaining show about cars.
It was a switch off. Especially if many of the less intelligent fans aped speed and attempted slides and spills.
Sad really as these three were actually starting to come out of the original 3s shadow as more likeable and gelled better.
As a fan it’s slightly sad, but it’s heartening to know they value employees and know when the risk is not worth it.
(Obviously and cynically there’s more to the story and the outcome will probably have been different if it was a faceless employee!)
I personally thought he was (is) very impressive, and an absolute natural on camera...
I gave up on Top Gear a long time ago - once it became more and more about 'entertainment', with ever more unfunny 'desperate-to-offend and cause controversy' jokes, bullying (e.g. the Morris Marina fanclub) and tediously set-up 'dramatic moments'.
I never watched the post-Clarkson et al Top Gear, or the Grand Tour. Once you could watch people actually reviewing cars on youtube, I can't see why any car fan persisted with Top Gear.
I've just signed up to Discovery+ so I can keep track of everything going on at the Smallest Cog.
I personally thought he was (is) very impressive, and an absolute natural on camera...
And subsidise the Government News? (We mock other countries for having state media news. And if you ask any foreigner who has come to this country, you'll find that they have the same opinion of BBC News.)
Don't pay he licence and they send you a letter every fortnight. You ignore it and then once in a decade someone comes round to your house. You close the door in their face, and they're powerless to do anything else.
(TV detector vans simply don't exist: nobody's ever seen one, nobody's ever been caught by one, nobody's ever worked in one. Plus they've been telling us that they have that technology since the 80s.)
I read a piece by an ex-collector who said that the only way they ever caught people was if those people were so obedient to 'authority' that they said 'yes' to the question, 'Can I come in and see if your TV is on?', and then it was.
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