Top Gear Series 27 episode 2 review: the show has ‘got its groove back’

The second episode of the new season of Top Gear is proving to be another hit with fans and critics, following a strong start for the revamped presenter line-up last week.

Series 27 kicked off last Sunday, introducing former England cricket captain Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff and Take Me Out host Patrick “Paddy” McGuinness as the show’s new presenters alongside the returning Chris Harris.

And while the show has come under fire repeatedly since Jeremy Clarkson was fired in 2015, a number of viewers reckon it has finally found its rhythm again.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The show’s high-octane supercars took a back seat for the new season’s second episode, with the trio of presenters instead putting three electric cars through a series of challenges.

One of them tasked the presenters with driving their EVs around a narrow circuit. Those who clipped the edges of the circuit would be given an electric shock, with the loser - Harris - having to drink a glass of milk while being shocked by his fellow presenters.

Harris also takes the new Tesla Model 3 for a spin around the Top Gear test track, describing the supercar-baiting electric saloon as an “AK47 disguised as a butter knife”.

Earlier this morning, Harris admitted on Twitter that he thinks he’ll be “buying a Tesla Model 3 quite soon”.

“One shudders to imagine what Jeremy Clarkson and co would have made of such tree-hugging tosh,” The Daily Telegraph says. “They would certainly have ranted about Guardian-reading, muesli-munching, humous-dipping liberals.”

But there was “no such scoffing” from the new presenting team, who delivered a “highly entertaining episode that augurs well for the motoring show’s latest incarnation”, the newspaper says.

There seems to be a real on-screen chemistry brewing between Harris and his new co-stars, with their “schoolboyish teasing and horseplay” leading to a “warm camaraderie”, the paper adds. It’s clear that the motoring show has “got its groove back” and is now “a jolly way to spend a Sunday night hour”.

What has been the reaction from fans?

Despite a few comments claiming that Top Gear isn’t the same without Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, fans on social media have been far more accepting of the new series.