New Top Gear- Season 1 Episode 1- Post show discussion thread

My thoughts-

I believe that a pilot wasn’t done (as its kinda a continuation), so there’s bound to be a few things that need changed as it’s the first attempt- if there’s no improvement by the end of the season we can start to properly be worried. Overall I thought it was pretty good, however a few notes I had-

-Beginning was very awkward but I don’t really see anyway for them to have done it without it being awkward with the huge elephant in the room

-Audience interaction needs to go it’s a stupid idea, the weird cheering is over the top- its like they’ve got someone in from audience management at Sunday night at the Palladium or something telling them everyone to cheer as hard as they can and it just sounds too over the top in this environment. Both are easily fixed, and hopefully will be.

-On that note the voting thing during the interview was stupid, although Evans is actually pretty good at interviewing (which makes sense hes done it for decades on TV and Radio). Also the double interview thing worked alright tonight but could depend on the guests and their personalities (I know OG TG did it one season but they were co stars or otherwise friends so it wasn’t as awkward)

-Chris Evans needs better scripting, atm its too clarksony. Some people thought he was imitating a Clarkson voice, and whilst I don’t think he’s deliberately doing it, it does sound kinda strange (random thought but he sounds a lot like Jon Bentley does on the gadget show- way too excited). It might take a few episodes for him to find the right tone of voice for it, it needs to be over the top without sounding like a blatant Jeremy rip off

-Matt was very funny and better than Chris, and his Ariel Nomad segment was fantastic, reminiscent of something Hammond would do. Clearly the best part of the show

-Blackpool segment was alright, not awful but not brilliant

-Cinematology and production values are still amazing (ignoring the stuff with the audience) *