Time For A New Cog For Top Gear?

Top Gear, in its reinvented form, is now ten years old. It's a ten years that has gone by as fast as the supercars that are its raison d'etre. And I am a fan. I have watched from the beginning and indeed used to watch it in the old days when Jeremy Clarkson was just a jobbing reporter, albeit the best one.

But I don't think I am alone in seeing that the show is growing a little tired, a little predictable. The Christmas Special was typically unChristmassy but it was also decidedly unspecial, and I'm not one who was offended by the jokes. It all seemed forced, three men trying hard to be wacky and controversial and only succeeding in the latter.

Of course the challenges keep getting bigger, better and bolder thanks to the shows' stunning international success and consequent budget; but the ideas are running out, the banter is getting more forced, the unscripted bits are looking ever more scripted.

Perhaps the time has come to inject some new blood, and I'm not talking about yet another fresh Stig. The weakest link in the show is actually Richard Hammond, who has always been a DJ or daytime TV star who found himself unexpectedly in a hit peaktime show but cannot quite throw off his origins. Where May and Clarkson genuinely love cars and are clever and witty, Hammond has to rely on his boyish charm, which appeals to the laydeez. That is the paradox of Top Gear; it has never been a show for blokes per se. It is just a show that celebrates blokeishness; and women rather like that.

But this is why they need some new blood. They've done it before. People tend to forget that James May was not in the first series of the reinvented show. His slot was occupied by a chubby used car dealer named Jason Dawe. But that was in the days before the show had found its feet and indeed its niche. Back then it still thought it was a car show.

None of this is to diminish the achievements of Top Gear, it is merely to suggest a little refurbishment and perhaps some new ideas. Too much television goes out of its way to toe the politically correct line, not to offend and to tick all the inclusiveness boxes. Top Gear has proven that actually the viewing public find all of this kind of thing dreary and just want a laugh. But sometimes even the best jokes need refreshment.