Just finished watching the new Top Gear series with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc as hosts. Despite reading all the negative reviews on the Guardian's live review earlier in the day, I watched it with an open mind and hoping for the best. While they've done a great job of maintaining the top notch production value and interesting challenges, I was pretty disappointed over all.
Chris Evans was trying WAY too hard and LeBlanc seemed nervous in studio and really scripted. Chemistry between them seemed pretty engineered. As this is just their first episode I'll reserve final judgement until they have an opportunity to hit their stride, but seems this is the beginning of the end of Top Gear.
One potential glimmer of hope is that Chris Harris and Rory Reid did a great job on Extra Gear following the show. I think they should have just cast those two plus one other relative "unknown" as the hosts. Harris is totally natural on camera, interesting to watch, and has the same sort of mischievous nature and enthusiasm as Clarkson, Hammond and May.
Perhaps the Producers will do some shuffling next season and we'll see Harris replace the other Chris. Fingers crossed.
Chris Evans was trying WAY too hard and LeBlanc seemed nervous in studio and really scripted. Chemistry between them seemed pretty engineered. As this is just their first episode I'll reserve final judgement until they have an opportunity to hit their stride, but seems this is the beginning of the end of Top Gear.
One potential glimmer of hope is that Chris Harris and Rory Reid did a great job on Extra Gear following the show. I think they should have just cast those two plus one other relative "unknown" as the hosts. Harris is totally natural on camera, interesting to watch, and has the same sort of mischievous nature and enthusiasm as Clarkson, Hammond and May.
Perhaps the Producers will do some shuffling next season and we'll see Harris replace the other Chris. Fingers crossed.
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