Does BBC know how to revive Top Gear after losing 'secret sauce'?

I should declare an interest here. Chris Harris is a friend and anyone reading this who knows that might understandably be concluding that my views reflect his, or that they’ve been informed by stuff he’s said to me in private. So, and for the record, they don’t, not least because he’s a friend and I’d never put him in that position. I have genuinely no idea whether he thinks TG should be put out to pasture or revived, because I’ve not asked him the question.

But my view is that a decision which appears to leave all parties on the losing side is a bad decision. It gives the impression, at least to me, not so much that the BBC doesn’t want to bring TG back – for clearly but for Flintoff’s crash it would still be in production – but that it doesn’t know how. And that, I suspect is what lies at the crux of the matter.

Let’s not forget that we’ve been here before. After Clarkson, Hammond and May left, Top Gear was relaunched in 2016 with a show presented by a dizzying array of highly variable talent led by Chris Evans. And because he was almost indescribably awful in that role, the show tanked. One by one the talent either left, was redeployed or simply not used again until Harris alone remained. He was then teamed with Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness and they found a successful way to do TG, as had Clarkson and Co after the William Woollard era ran out of puff. And it’s only my opinion, but having steered the show through the most difficult of times – presenting either outdoors or without an audience or both during Covid – these three were still getting better when Flintoff had his accident.

So perhaps no one can face going through that process again. Or perhaps no one knows how to. For every successful era of TG has had a producer back stage who’s been the secret sauce in the recipe: a person everyone else looked up to, who held it all together and made it happen. In the Clarkson era is was a bloke called Andy Wilman, in the Harris, Flintoff, McGuinness era it was a lady called Clare Pizey. It is any coincidence this announcement comes just weeks after Pizey’s own announcement that she was leaving the BBC? Again, I don’t know, but what I do know is that the role she played in TG as it is (or was) today, was absolutely pivotal.

Maybe then, they’ve just run out of ideas, which is a pretty damning thought when it comes to one of the BBC’s best earners.

But it’s all very well to sit on the sidelines and carp. The more difficult question, perhaps the one to which the BBC appears unable to find a convincing answer, is what should the programme be, if ever it were to be brought back. Well for a start it has finally to be safe for those in front of the cameras. I simply don’t buy the line that the danger is all part of the show. These are clever people and this is showbusiness – it can be and frequently is made to look far more dangerous than it actually is.

As for the presenters, the BBC should learn from history, which reveals with great clarity that the only people who really work for TG in the long term are people who know and love cars. Specifically, Clarkson, Hammond, May and Harris. McGuinness and Flintoff were fine, but without Harris anchoring both, there’d have been no authority, no credibility and, therefore, no show. If you think about it, it’s really not that surprising. So unless any of the main men can be talked back, it is their replacements that need to be found. Do that, and everything else is detail.

For myself I don’t believe for a moment that Top Gear is gone for good. The BBC will bring it back because ultimately there’s too much money to be made for it not to. Indeed the biggest threat to the programme right now some other series coming along and occupying the now conveniently vacated space. Will that happen? I don’t know. Will there be meetings in production company board rooms happening right now to see how it might? You can bet your life on it.