Top Gear last episode review: A momentous occasion for Clarkson, Hammond and May fans

Sometimes I think we’ll find global peace eventually, that warring nations will one day lay down their arms and that everyone will just learn to get along. Then I look at the viewing figures for Top Gear and I’m reminded that this world is filled with people I’ll never understand.

For the one million who signed a petition calling on the BBC to reinstate Jeremy Clarkson, last night was a momentous television occasion — the final BBC Two Top Gear featuring the Clarkson / Hammond / May line up. Or three blokes and their last heroic stand against the party-pooping forces of political correctness.

Well, not quite three. Although Clarkson appeared in the two features that made up the bulk of the episode, he couldn’t be present in the studio to record links, having already been suspended at the time of filming, due to an incident you may have heard about at a hotel back in March.

open image in gallery

Instead he was represented by a 10ft plastic replica elephant (the elephant in the room — geddit?!). And if you think that’s sad, imagine how the people who had to shoot this episode felt. Former executive producer Andy Wilman, who quit the show in solidarity shortly after Clarkson’s dismissal, has said it was “very sad, absolutely awful to make”, while Hammond concurred that the filming experience “broke my heart”. But was it also totes emosh to watch?

The absence of the usual studio audience did create an eerie quiet that even May’s incredibly loud floral shirt and patchwork blazer combo couldn’t fill, but the pair did their best to lift the sombre mood by sounding perky.

Sadly, these efforts had been pre-undermined by Clarkson who described this final episode in his Sun column this week as “cobbled together”. Though he did concede that, of the two films included, “one of them is quite good.”

open image in gallery

He was probably talking about the second, in which the lads were challenged to buy a sports utility vehicle each for £250 or less, then use them to see if the rugged, outdoorsy SUV lifestyle is possible on a much reduced budget. Watching the three (plus ‘Leisure Stig’) trash their towed caravans as they raced around a track was almost as much fun to watch as it must have been to film.

The first feature was a more civilised, and therefore less entertaining, affair. They bought a Fiat 124 Spider, an MGB GT and a Peugeot 304 Cabriolet and spent a few days living the classic car experience in ‘classic’ British weather — “basically, Jeremy’s idea of hell”, said Hammond. This involved some antique shopping in the Cotswolds, a hunt for a pub according to May’s very fussy specifications and more breakdowns than Clarkson has had hot dinners in Yorkshire hotels.

Mercifully, neither of the films included any racial slurs for old times’ sake (unless you count whinging endlessly about how the Americans ruined the Fiat 124 Spider), but even without them, it still felt like the end of an era. Only it wasn’t. BBC2’s Top Gear will be back with Chris Evans and the unholy trio will also be back flogging Audis on Netflix, or the like, before we know it. The Peugeot 304 Cabriolet may be a temperamental one-off which responds to loving care, but boorish, bullying TV presenters are more like buses. There’ll be another one along in a minute.