Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s final episode of Top Gear has fuelled huge viewing on the iPlayer, with almost 3 million people watching their swansong on the catch-up TV service.
The much-hyped final episode, a cobbling-together of the final two episodes of the current series that were not completed following Clarkson’s “fracas” with a producer, proved to be the most popular programme on the iPlayer in June.
The final episode, which aired on 28 June, drew 1.5 million viewing requests on the iPlayer that month.
It managed to attract 50% more requests than the next most popular show, despite only having two days to amass viewers for the iPlayer’s June Top 20 chart.
The final episode continued to do brisk business in July, notching up another 1.04 million viewing requests.
This was enough to rank the show second for July, behind an episode of EastEnders.
In total the final Top Gear episode drew 2.55m iPlayer views, about half the audience that tuned in to watch the show live on BBC2.
It drew an average TV audience of 5.3 million and a 23% share of all viewing in its slot.
