New Top Gear audience drops AGAIN – and episode 4 goes backwards

The ‘New’ Top Gear saw its audience drop still further this week, but the missing viewers only really missed a show with nothing new to offer.

We’re trying really hard to like ‘new’ Top Gear with Evans, LeBlanc et al, and last week’s TG was actually rather enjoyable with a very good segment with Chris Harris and Ferrari TDFs (old and new) and good backup from the rest of the programme. But it all went a bit backwards this week.

Chris Harris was out playing with the Aston Martin Vulcan at Yas Marina, and it was good, but not really good enough.

Harris is great at driving (very well) and speaking at the same time, but the whole piece just seemed a bit flat, especially pitting the Vulcan against a V12 Vantage S.

Yes, the Vantage S is Aston’s most powerful road car, and the piece was supposed to show the yawning gap between the track Vulcan and Aston’s quickest road car. But there was no drama, and even the images on screen seemed below par. Old TG did a much better job.

The segment with the Tesla Model X could have been interesting, but came across as a eulogy designed to apologise for Clarkson’s hammering of the Tesla Roadster a few years back.

In fact, the piece clearly lied about the Model X’s range, because there’s no way it could use Ludicrous mode to out-drag a Dodge Challenger Hellcat, drive a couple of hundred miles around New York State and still have 20 miles left in the tank. It just can’t be done.

Finally, the Race Challenge was back, but that too fell flat.

The premise was that Eddie Jordan would travel from London to Venice on the Venice Simplon Orient-Express, and Chris Evans, Sabine Schmitz and Matt LeBlanc would get the same amount of money to buy transport and make the trip by road.

Evan took an old shape Jaguar XJ, Scmitz an old Audi A8 (who’d have guessed either of those choices) and Matt LeBlanc…a Honda Gullwing. Why?

But the race started with the road trippers already in France as Jordan started from London, there was no jeopardy, no useful feedback on the cars and no sense that any of them cared about the result. So why should we?

One step forward last week, two steps (and more) back this week.