by All good things must come to an end – and most bad things too. When it was reported on Saturday that ex-Top Gear Stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May split after 21 years as a trio, you couldn’t really describe it as “going out with a bang”. A car exhaust is backfiring, pushing. No, this could be more accurately described as an anti-climax – the Top Gear the bandwagon slowly stopped after burning the last unleaded sediments.
The long and short of it is this: W Chump & Sons, the production company of Clarkson, Hammond, and May, has reportedly gone out of business. The Great Journeya series of themes of stripping, travel and heterosexual Prime Video and de facto successor to Top Gear, appears to have recorded its last episode – or at least the last one with this production line. (The final hurrah, a special in which the three of them travel to Zimbabwe, is yet to come.) The reasons for this may not be specified, but it doesn’t take too much deductive acrobatics to guess. . For the past two decades, the three presenters have been carrying out the same regressive programme, with plenty of controversy along the way. If the series is popular and profitable – as it undoubtedly has been for years – this is not seen as a problem. But now? It could be straight.
in his grip, Top Gear one of the BBC’s biggest success stories. From 2003 to 2015, Clarkson, Hammond and May were three of the most visible and popular presenters on British television. It is without doubt Top Gearthe massive audience that allowed the series to settle on controversies – homophobic jokes; racist jokes; witty jokes; jokes involving the use of terrible slurs; jokes about sex worker murders. It wasn’t until Clarkson physically attacked a producer that he was executed as host, with Hammond and May voluntarily following him out the door. Therefore there was The Great Journey born.
Top Gear continued on the BBC with a series of changing hosts, until it was finally abandoned following a near-fatal car accident involving presenter Freddie Flintoff. In truth, there was little controversy when the BBC announced the hiatus – a testament to the great decline in audience interest. But over on Prime Video, The Great Journey likewise in relative anonymity. The series has consistently drawn solid numbers: Amazon does not release audience figures, but a Reuters report from 2018 claimed that the series was the streamer’s most successful program when it came to signing up new users. However, it is expensive to produce, and rarely discussed or recognized in the wider media. Compared to Clarkson’s other flagship Prime Video venture, the buzzy agricultural reality series Clarkson Farm, it is completely invisible. In some ways, this is an improvement on the Top Gear old – in his host’s careers scheme, The Great Journey it is refreshingly scandal-lite. But there is only silence due to the lack of outcry, the dawning realization that shock and provocation could be the currency of the three.
It is also, perhaps, a question of varying success. Clarkson, the front-runner for the reactions of the three, has always been the most independent success, both as a television presenter and as a scathing tabloid essayist. It has only been in recent years, however, that he has transitioned to being a farmer and an anchor of it Clarkson Farm, that he channeled this popularity into a wider sense of goodwill. For the first time in his career, Clarkson has, to some extent, won over many of his critics across the political spectrum. And – perhaps crucially – Hammond and May had nothing to do with it. It’s as if the three of them decided to open up about their relationship, but Clarkson grows a little too attached to his new partner and decides that maybe this whole polyamory idea isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Neither Hammond nor May could match Clarkson in their individual efforts – think of him as Simon and two Garfunkels. Both of them remained steadily employed, however. May is probably best known for his toy-themed docuseries (James May’s favorite toys; Toy Stories James May) and currently hosts a cooking and travel series for Prime Video. Hammond added layers like Brainiac and Total Wipeout. They’ll also be fine going forward, but it’s hard to see them regaining the kind of profiles they had in the shadow of Clarkson’s ban. Make no mistake, the decision to follow him to Prime Video was certainly an act of self-interest and loyalty.
It may be too early to declare this a victory for Clarkson. In December 2022, the presenter put his career in jeopardy with a scatological hit piece aimed at the Duchess of Sussex. Reports said Amazon wanted to cancel it The Great Journey as a result, and there would be a cut Clarkson Farm at the end of the four seasons already agreed upon. These reports (including Clarkson’s own), and the success of the third series, have been disputed Clarkson Farmwhich is now the highest performing UK original in the streamer’s history, indicating that further renewal is a real possibility.
The break up of the former Top Gear Triumvirate is the end of an era, sure, but not worth crying. Their partnership leaves a legacy of bigotry and stunted masculinity. If the highest compliment given to a 21-year-old television dynasty is that “you had a good question”, it’s as much a failure of ambition as anything. If you do nothing to raise the form, it’s only a matter of time before the form rises anyway – and swallows you up in the process.
