Chris Evans opened a recording of the long-awaited first episode of the new series of Top Gear by telling the audience at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey last week that he was nervous. “Shitting” himself in fact.
And who could blame him? Not only is his version of the BBC’s £50m franchise starting this weekend but he has suffered months of press scrutiny ever since he was declared the successor to Jeremy Clarkson.
Having applied successfully for a ticket by ballot, I spent almost four hours watching Evans and his co-star Matt LeBlanc in the first recording open to the public.
Despite months of tabloid stories, most notably in the Sun, about the supposedly troubled production of the new series, there was a lot of goodwill towards Evans after the admission of nerves.
With Evans more used to straight live broadcasts (as on Radio 2 and TFI Friday), the producers announced a plan to try and film the show “as-live” in an hour.
This proved optimistic. Audience members who had been to see Evans and LeBlanc’s predecessors Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May told me that they took more than four hours to finish an episode. And that was years into their tenure when they had the show off-pat. This was the first episode with a new team, a new set-up and a bigger audience.
LeBlanc went down well with the audience, with a number of quips and even patiently repeating Joey Tribbiani’s “how you doin’” catchphrase during a filming break.
Evans had problems with a couple of lines – at one point he had his head in his hands and pretended to beat it on a car bonnet after getting stuck on a piece about the return of The Stig.
Between takes he swapped banter with LeBlanc (the pair appeared to have a healthy, humorous rivalry, despite the tabloid reports to the contrary) and the audience about them not folding their arms or standing with their hands in their pockets.
The crowd, some of whom were Clarkson fans and some not, seemed to enjoy the new show.
Where others described a “four-letter rant” I heard someone joking. Neither did I see people walking out of the show until the end.
Some of it was different from Clarkson, Hammond and May – and while Evans and LeBlanc are stars in their own right, and do not have years of camaraderie behind them, they had an instant competitive rapport.
The new series retains the high-speed hallmarks of the old and – while it may have a lot of work to do to get past the Clarkson purists – it remains as entertaining as ever. Which will be bad news to those who wish it ill.
