BBC confirms new Top Gear TV show

Old dog. New tricks?

By PH Staff / Thursday, 27 August 2026 / Loading comments

If the definition of madness really is trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, BBC Studios ought to have been committed years ago. Attempting to reignite the curious chemistry that made Clarkson, Hammond and May such a watchable trio has led the Corporation’s commercial wing down all manner of weird (and occasionally unwatchable) cul-de-sacs. Its last go, featuring a former PH employee, of course, arguably came closest. And we all know how that ended.

In light of Freddy Flintoff’s life-changing accident - and the costly legal fallout that followed it - it seemed like TG might be done for good. Certainly at the time, the BBC indicated the concept was coming ‘to rest’ indefinitely. But four years is a long time in show business, and with Flintoff’s tell-all now very much in the public domain, the powers that be are apparently content to draw a line under the past, and launch optimistically into the future.

Or at least that’s what the BBC's director of entertainment Ed Havard told the Edinburgh TV Festival on Thursday: "There has been a lot of speculation about this and we can confirm that Top Gear is coming back.” Naturally this has sparked an immediate twirl of an already spinning rumour mill, with Jimmy Carr mooted as the leading contender for a presenter job. BBC News, always on sparkling form when reporting on the corporation’s activities, lobs scrum enthusiast and inveterate truth-teller Joe Marler into the frame.

So that’s two. Whether or not a new version of the show would follow the tried and tested format of three presenters - or indeed, any of the much-copied format - isn’t clear. "I'm not going to talk about talent today,” said Havard. Individual talent, though, as previous experiments have shown, is only half the battle. Doubtless BBC Studios will have been furiously chemistry testing behind the scenes, hoping to catch even a glimmer of real-world spark. We’d humbly suggest that liking cars is a good start. Ditto each other.