Glenister, Kidd, Martin…. New Top Gear hosts?

Glenister is a bit rubbish on For The Love of Cars, he is too wooden and seems to have no passion.

Kidd is ok but I’m not sure how she would be as a presenter.

I love Guy Martin as much as the next man and he could be great, he is so enthusiastic and often OTT with it. Him building/modifying cars would be brilliant, however I don’t think the presenters ever actually did it themselves. I imagine there would be a lot of footage of him cracking on to Jodie Kidd.

Cite Harris would be good and is as enthusiastic as Martin, he certainly deserves a job on the telly.

JK has also been mooted and I think he would also be good, he knows a lot about cars and has owned a lot of them.

I think Martin, Harris andJK would be a good combination but from all the reports it sounds like the beeb seem to want a woman in there too.

Who had heard of may and Hammond before they did top gear? Time for the beeb to find some new talent rather than looking at established figures.

Shoehorning presenters into a format based on piss-taking and idiocy would be no more successful than Top Gear America or Australia. Which have been flops.

I reckon they’ll mothball it for a few years then bring it back once Clarkson has had some therapy or somesuch.

I’d heard of May, I was at school with him and he worked on car mags before TG.
Hammond was mostly in radio before TG.

It could work if they gave it a fresh format to suit the participants, bring back bikes (Steve Berry was great back when the show was actually about cars!).

I agree Chris Harris could be good.

Also Harry Metcalf- ex owner of Evo magazine. Check out Harry’s Garage on youtube. Great enthusiasm for the subject and he could read out the phone book and make it sound intersting

Glenister seems like a nice chap and he obviously likes cars but he’s just not a suitable replacement. Think about what Clarkson is/was like: 70s throwback, out-dated attitudes, dodgy comments about women/foreigners etc, verbal bullying, liable to lash out if frustrated. It’s not Glenister people want, it’s Gene Hunt.

I was at Dunsfold Aerodrome on Sunday, the guys I was with are just down from the Top Gear hangar, said the studio’s been stripped down, everything’s been taken out, which didn’t used to happen between series. They’re not expecting to see anythign Top gear related there any time soon. They said it’s a shame, the show brought a lot of life and interest to the place.

I get the impression from the choice of presenters that it will be some kind of Blue Peter for adults with cars.
With all three in a dull studio doing banter, followed by a piece on a type of car all very informative and then a whacky bit with Guy Martin doing somethin with a car/bike/plane whatever.

I feel it will be typical BBC bollox.

I reckon they’ll mothball it for a few years then bring it back once Clarkson has had some therapy or somesuch.

There did seem to be a few comments out there hinting as much.

Think about what Clarkson is/was like: 70s throwback, out-dated attitudes, dodgy comments about women/foreigners etc, verbal bullying, liable to lash out if frustrated. It’s not Glenister people want, it’s Gene Hunt.

This – they want the Gene Hunt version, but that’ll be ‘okay’ because it’s scripted rather than for real (even though I suspect most of Clarksons TG apprearances were some big scripted persona anyway).

It’s the Toyota HiLux I feel sorry for. Wonder whats happened to that.

It’ll come back totally different- it’s been reinvented before and I’m sure the BBC were aware of a load of grumpy old farts on a cycling forum saying “but it’s so stale, it’s just the same show rehashed” and had some ideas floating around.

It’ll come back a bit rough around the edges but by the 3rd new series it’ll be great again I’m sure.

Martin, Harris and JK would probably be a good fit, or Metcalfe in Harris’s place. It needs someone who’s a bit of an idiot to make it interesting rather than the Gadget Show.

Jodie Kidd? we love Jodie – so, what we need, right, is like a Countryfile, right, but with cars, ok? and Philip Glenister, we love Philip, and he’s like, the john craven father figure, right, and Guy, everyone loves Guy, and he’s like the Adam Henson figure, because he really knows his stuff, right?

As above, the format will be mothballed for a year or so. Funnily enough- towards the end I was getting really irritated by the show yet now its gone I love watching all the repeats on Dave again 🙂

just let it go.

Thanks to this thread 🙁 I now have an annoying earworm from Frozen…
and as a) I only have sons, b) the youngest is 17
I’ve never even seen the film

Martin, Harris and JK would probably be a good fit,

As long as you meant Jodie, not the annoying berk from Jamiroquai, who has also been touted by soom.

I suppose it could struggle on like that, but it needs some rapport, and I can’t see where that’s coming from.

Above all though, it needs some fresh ideas. The old team would still be going strong if it weren’t for their well of ideas running dry.

Ninfan has it though, really. Countryfile with Cars.

Why does anyone care any more?

TG should just die it’s final death.
All the speculative bollox over who’ll take over presenting is pointless… Nobody would want that job as failure is near enough guaranteed…

Once Clarkson signs up with Sky or Netflix or wherever He’s meant to be going all the faithful will flock to see him playing the oaf in his new setting and it’ll be back to business as usual…

The thing about the original 3 presenters is they genuinely are “car” people. You can imagine all three down the pub arguing about which is better, the 205 gti or the Golf Gti, and each of them would really understand and be knowledgeable about those cars.

Glenister and Kidd, whilst clearly “liking” cars are not in the same league and it shows, badly, particularly Glenister who on his current show is just been told to “act enthusiastic” about some car or other, but it’s obviously put on (no real car nut would unthinkingly slam the door shut on someones pride and joy!!!)

Martin would be much better, and is a real car person, and i could see him taking Mays position in the hierarchy, but he would need real good co-presenters to make it work imo

Ben Collins? You think enough water has gone under the bridge? Perhaps, but aside from Stig he’s not exactly a household name.

What we need is someone fairly well known, who isn’t afraid of a bit of controversy and knows his way around a track.

Hmm, when’s Plato due to retire?

Format can’t continue with different people anyway, adapt or die…

Did you know Jeremy Clarkson before Top Gear? What was he famous for? Literally his whole career was Top Gear.

Plato is fantastic. I rate his tests on cars that he did on 5th gear.

The format has been successfully sold worldwide and run with different people, why not do it here?

You need to think what success looks like- Top Gear can lose half its traditional audience and still get enough numbers to be viable. Carrying on as if nothing happened is probably impossible but that doesn’t mean it’s pointless.

And who knows, maybe losing that chunk of the audience who can’t accept any change, will enable them to do something interesting and attract another audience.

Did you know Jeremy Clarkson before Top Gear? What was he famous for? Literally his whole career was Top Gear.

As a 4 year old I was an avid reader of his column in Car magazine.

To answer your question seriously, no. But if we look at ‘new’ Top Gear then yes, he had already established himself as a name. Extreme Machines was good telly.

The format has been successfully sold worldwide and run with different people,

Successfully?

The US one is chewing gum for the eyes. Its terrible. The French one linked above looks quite tastey though.

Bring back Scrapheap Challenge! Now that was top telly.

Bring back Scrapheap Challenge! Now that was top telly

….until they changed the format

Did you know Jeremy Clarkson before Top Gear? What was he famous for? Literally his whole career was Top Gear.

Bit like asking what did David Beckham do before he was a footballer! Or, maybe more pertinantly, what Philip Glenister did before Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes.

No the implication was that he was already a celeb. Outside of certain circles he was an unknown. TG in a way made him and vice versa.

New format and new presenters? If so they really should give it a new name also which would give the BBC the ability to bring the proper Top Gear back as and when they need/want to.

tiggs121 – Member

I wonder if Clarkson, Hammond and May will defect to ITV/SKY etc and make “2nd Top Gear”

I bet the bosses have thought about it!

They almost certainly will, it’s no surprise that RH and JM jumped ship about the same time – not to mention Andy Wilman, the supposed brains behind it – I’d bet they’ll emerge in a few months, just look at the figures it gets, it’s worth billions worldwide and no one outside of Britain will care if it’s made by the BBC or Sky, or ITV or Netflix – they have to suffer adverts anyway, they’ll be batting off big money offers left, right and centre – lets not forget this wouldn’t be the first time TopGear was relaunched outside of the BBC under a slightly different name – Fifth Gear was just that.

As for the 3 proposed presenters, to me it sounds like Chinese whispers gone too far, they were mentioning those 3 weeks ago, only now someone’s mate’s flatmate’s sisters brother supposedly over-heard Andy Wilman talking to someone in a restaurant about the next presenters (before he changed his mind completely and left the BBC I guess).

Jodie Kidd is okay, but a bit cold and wooden, Glenister is a good actor IMO, but not a great presenter, and Guy Martin is wonderful, but I don’t think it would suit him at all.

I believe the BBC will push it more towards the entertainment / chat show direction, more adventure films, more guests and the like and less car reviews – hell even TG did less than one an episode on average.

Is this not what’s being settled tomorrow? They all look a bit shit to me.

it’s worth billions worldwide

Yeah right!

Ant Anstead, Plato and Ben Collins would be a good shout for backing presenters.

The main draw – **** knows

well ive no idea who the broad is but was quite happy that a couple of Northerners were gonna take over but ive just found out Gene Hunt is a fraud! im still a fan of Guy Martin tho so be interesting to see how it works out.

I hadnt watched the old format for years because of them 3 cretinous tagnuts and their stupid scripted ‘banter’so cant really be any worse.

As for the 3 proposed presenters, to me it sounds like Chinese whispers gone too far,

My thoughts exactly. It’s one part clickbait, one part speculation and three parts wishful thinking. Top Gear cannot continue in its current format by replacing characters like-for-like. It’s that simple.

We could sit here and say that Robert Llewellyn would probably make a great James May replacement for instance, but that’s missing the point, we have to look at the thing as a whole. Trying to replicate the existing previous presenters 1:1 just invites comparison and you’ll end up either with “an inferior version of Clarkson” or having to get Nigel Farage as anchor. A hypothetical new TG will need a new team of presenters, not a new JC / JM / RH.

ElShalimo – Member

it’s worth billions worldwide

Yeah right!

Sorry, I got carried away, that should have read ‘Millions’ -it makes around £50m a year for the BBC from selling the show itself, plus DVDs and books etc – on a commercial channel it would make more at a national level of course.

Global audience is 350m and that’s weekly figures, not annual – big TV shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory’ might get 30m globally, ‘The Walking Dead 20m’ and Game of Thrones 18m –