Top Gear missing episodes WILL air this summer
BBC2 boss Kim Shillinglaw has declared that the footage from Top Gear’s series 22, cancelled after the Jeremy Clarkson ‘Fracas’, will air this summer.
Having shot themselves in the foot by making a public spectacle out of an incident that should have been an in-house discipline job, the Beeb had no choice but to dispense with Jeremy Clarkson’s services on Top Gear, in the process dumping some expensively acquired footage as the final episodes of series 22 were pulled.
Once Jeremy had gone – and Richard Hammond and James May look like they have voluntarily gone with him – there was no way the remaining episodes could air in the usual format, as a chunk of every episode is filmed the Wednesday before with a studio audience, Star in a Reasonably Priced car and the news.
But that still leaves all the programme items made – at not insignificant cost – in the months before to play with, and that’s exactly what the Beeb are doing, with the head of BBC2, Kim Shillinglaw, declaring that the unseen footage will air this summer.
Shillinglaw is working with the TG production team to put together the footage – sans normal studio stuff – and the most likely format seems a couple of Top Gear Specials in the summer, but without any ‘SIARPC’ or any studio stuff beyond, perhaps, talking head links between the items.
But that will mean we get to see stuff like Clarkson, May and Hammond out playing with classic British cars – Jeremy in a Fiat 124 Spider, Richard in a MGB GT and James in a Peugeot 304 Cabriolet – VW Golf R and Subaru WRX STi from episode 8, and secondhand SUVs – Vauxhall Frontera, Jeep Cherokee and Shogun Pinin – and luxury limos from episode 9.
Whether anything will ever come of the ‘Hypercar Head to head’ between the McLaren P1, LaFerrari and Porsche 918, who knows? Maybe that will be left for ‘New New’ Top Gear when that arrives in 2016.
Although it seems likely ‘New New’ Top Gear will be a bit more PC, so Hypercar shoot-outs may not fit the brief.
Dave Price says
With Jezza gone, May saying Top GFear without Clarkson is stupid and Andy Willman resigning it’s hard to see the running of this footage as anything other than Top Gear’s eulogy.