It’s been four years since Top Gear aired its last episode on the BBC, with the hit motoring series coming to an abrupt end after an accident while filming nearly proved deadly for presenter Freddie Flintoff. The former cricketer reportedly received £9m in compensation, though still bears the scars of the crash, both physical and psychological. This week, however, BBC director of entertainment Ed Havard confirmed that a new series is officially in the works; reports that grinning comedian Jimmy Carr is being eyed to take over as host are, for the time being, just gossip.
There’s something squalidly backwards-looking about the BBC returning to the Top Gear well. Its hiatus may have been spurred by a health and safety scandal, but the fact is, it could – and maybe should – have been cancelled years before. Should it have been canned in 2019, when a presenting reshuffle saw Friends star Matt LeBlanc leave the show?
In 2015, when Jeremy Clarkson assaulted a producer, resulting in the departure of the Clarkson-James May-Richard Hammond hosting triumvirate that had fronted the show since its 2002 revival? Or earlier still: when Clarkson, in 2014, was filmed muttering “n*****” while reciting a racist nursery rhyme in a Top Gear outtake? Or earlier that same year, when he used the term “slope” on camera in an oblique reference to an Asian person?
Or one of the other countless offensive moments from the show’s chequered past? There’s no “three strikes and you’re out” here. Top Gear has had more strikes than a pro bowler.
You could argue that Top Gear has moved on from the more disreputable scandals of its past; at this point, you can barely make out the laddish, problematic days of Clarkson in the rear-view. But Flintoff’s accident brought into focus another, more serious question. He wasn’t the first driver to crash while filming Top Gear.
It wasn’t even his first crash, with Flintoff said to have narrowly escaped serious harm in a vehicular accident in 2019. Hammond was left in a coma in 2006 after a grievous crash; Clarkson and erstwhile host Paddy McGuinness have also both been in accidents. The show’s safety protocols shouldn’t be fodder for uninformed speculation: back in 2023, the BBC commissioned an investigation to assess the facts of Flintoff’s case, and you would imagine that robust protocols would be introduced to minimise the chance of a repeat.
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