The last time we saw Top Gear, it was the Season 22 finale that felt incomplete — which it was. Jeremy Clarkson, one of the BBC show's three hosts and the creator of the “new” version (Top Gear's first incarnation was a less fun, more factual car review and news show), had been fired for punching a producer. His two longtime co-hosts, James May and Richard Hammond, presented what they could cobble together from the footage shot before Clarkson's departure. And then they, too, said good-bye. The three will reunite on Amazon for a new car show premiering sometime in the fall.
BBC doesn't want to let a good thing die, so it replaced Clarkson, May, and Hammond with new hosts (five of them, in fact) and set about shooting Season 23. And now we can see what we're in for.
Four of the show's hosts probably won't be familiar to Americans. The fifth is Matt LeBlanc. Yes, the Friends star is now a car show host, and being heavily marketed to the stateside audience in this first BBC America trailer:
The new show certainly has the same look as the old one, but will the new hosts have the same chemistry that made the Clarkson/May/Hammond version so fun? We'll find out in May, when Top Gear premieres on BBC America.