Really, the surprise isn’t that Chris Evans has quit Top Gear. The surprise is that he even hosted it in the first place.
Top Gear – at least the latest non-boring, non-serious, non-Angela Rippon version that’s existed since 2002 – is Jeremy Clarkson’s show. He created it. He presented it. He threaded his voice through it indelibly. He made his fortune from it. Whoever was tasked with replacing him, after he punched a man about some meat, was doomed to fail from the very beginning.
Jesus Christ himself could have descended from heaven, presented a note-perfect Christmas special about driving a Mazda to Madagascar, and Clarkson fans – the gimps in BMW fleeces who own every book the man ever wrote, like The World’s Gone Mad and Here’s What Gets My Goat and Tediously Contrary Opinions in Exchange for Cash – would have hated him on sight.
So what chance did Evans have? Shrill, try-hard Chris Evans from the 1990s. Anyone ancient enough to remember the Evans from two decades ago should have seen this coming. That Evans was a cranky control freak with a messiah complex who barged his way to success only to scupper himself with his own hubris. And although he’s worked hard to tamp down these polarising edges as the host of the Radio 2 breakfast show, they still don’t seem far from the surface.
Almost all the trouble that Evans encountered on Top Gear happened behind the scenes. Producers quit. Co-stars allegedly feuded with. He’s been accused of egomania and (after reports of alleged historic sexual assaults) much worse. Believe everything you read, and the message seems to be that Evans is not a pleasant man to work with.
But these storms could have been weathered if he’d succeeded onscreen. Unfortunately, he did not. Over the course of his six Top Gear episodes, he found himself caught between two poles; he was either too much like Clarkson, or not enough like Clarkson. Too shouty, too nauseous, too visibly nervous and with too few good lines, Evans realised too late that he’d inherited a show that was custom-made for someone else, and that it didn’t fit him at all.
Who knows what Top Gear could have become if he’d stuck it out. The sensible assumption is that he would have tailored it to his own strengths, toning down the suffocatingly rigid format and ramping up the live-wire spontaneity of the studio sections. But we’ll never know. Chris Evans is doomed to go down in history as Top Gear’s David Moyes; the capable pair of hands who suffered by comparison to his beloved predecessor.
The question now is: who’ll replace him? The smart money would be on a promotion for Matt LeBlanc, but his strength is as the laconic sidekick. Chris Harris impressed most this last series, both with his journalist’s eye and his driving ability, but his personality lacks the punch of Evans, let alone Clarkson.
We’ll be inundated with big-name suggestions in the coming weeks, but that would arguably be a mistake. What the BBC should do now is find an unknown. It should act as the star-maker it is by banking on a newcomer and letting them grow into the role. It could still fail that way. But at least it’d be a low-profile failure, and not the months-long implosion it was this time around.
