Many cynics said that the last half hour of Chris Evans’s TFI Friday revival on Channel 4 was his audition for Top Gear. How else do you explain the interminable petrol-soaked segment of the show which featured an overlong interview with Lewis Hamilton, a millionaire racing driver with the personality of a much less exciting man? And then a bunch of directly ripped Top Gear stunts and an actual VT featuring Evans and sacked Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson driving around in a sports car.
Evans says he was offered the job the day before TFI went live, and they were still writing the script. It seems he couldn’t wait to get started.
any cynics said that the last half hour of Chris Evans’s TFI Friday revival on Channel 4 was his audition for Top Gear. How else do you explain the interminable petrol-soaked segment of the show which featured an overlong interview with Lewis Hamilton, a millionaire racing driver with the personality of a much less exciting man? And then a bunch of directly ripped Top Gear stunts and an actual VT featuring Evans and sacked Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson driving around in a sports car.
Evans says he was offered the job the day before TFI went live, and they were still writing the script. It seems he couldn’t wait to get started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUWgT2rEc3o
And now it has been confirmed: Evans will head a new Top Gear lineup (the others are yet to be cast/announced) after Clarkson’s wingmen, James May and Richard Hammond, ruled themselves out of any future series. We must assume that they are regrouping with Clarkson to become, effectively, “Mutya Keisha Siobhan” on another channel while the new presenters take over their Sugababes brand name.
Considering the publicity surrounding Evans, it looks like a smart move by the BBC. Like the speculation for a new Doctor Who, every bookie and pundit in town has been drawing up lists of possible Clarkson replacements since he was sacked in March for thumping a co-worker. And Evans was at the top of all of them. At some point, every presenter and actor even slightly whiffing of sump oil has been mooted, then either vilified on social media (see Sue Perkins, who had no interest in the job in the first place) or has had to rule themselves out.
Evans’s obvious obsession with cars (and financial ability to surround himself with them whenever he fancies) was always going to make him the most Clarkson-like choice. He is also used to running a rowdy studio-based show with an in-vision audience. As he hits middle age, the Top Gear sofa seems the natural home for a former 90s “lad” now more into golf and luxury cars.
In all his recent presenting jobs, Evans has tried to shoehorn cars in there somewhere. His usually listenable Radio 2 breakfast show always descends into loudly revving engines and the flutter of wads of 50s every November when he holds an on-air auction for Children in Need. It basically consists of very rich people ringing in (all for a good cause) and hurling vast sums about in exchange for motor-racing days and so on. It is some of the worst radio you will ever hear. Better he just gives into his passion and works somewhere that deems this constant petrol talk appropriate.
But now the show has its charismatic figurehead (always the model with Clarkson as the big mouth and the other following behind), who will temper Evans’s enthusiasm and excitement? He needs at least one Eeyore to dilute his Tiggerish effervescence. And this would also be an excellent opportunity to offer a presenting job on the show to a woman.
Back in the TFI heyday, Evans and a woman on screen together meant only one thing: tiresome flirtation and objectification while he pretended to be bashfully awkward about it. But he would work well with a female co-host now, and the Top Gear brand wouldn’t suffer at all by making itself a bit more available to female viewers.
When it made the shift from dry motoring magazine programme to studio-based celebrity chat show with elaborate stunt VTs thrown in, I remember really enjoying Top Gear for about a year until Hammond, May and Clarkson started to resemble patrician pillocks sneering at people with cars less flash than their own. Then I turned off. But it could be inclusive again, if Evans can notch down his tendency to mention how wealthy and well-connected he is. He has to hit that seam of aspiration without looking too smug about the 20 supercars he has stashed in a barn somewhere. I’ll definitely be watching his first show to see if he manages it.
Source:https://www.theguardian.com
