BBC's Top Gear Is Officially Dead in the UK, Popular TV Show Won't Return Anytime Soon

In an official statement released yesterday (November 21, 2023), BBC has quoted "exceptional circumstances," announcing that they have decided "to rest the UK show for the foreseeable future."

On a more positive note, fans will still get to see Chris Harris, Freddie Flintoff, and Paddy McGuinness, the co-hosts "who have been at the heart of the show's renaissance since 2019," as "BBC remains committed" to them and they are "excited about new projects being developed with each of them."

BBC vows to release more details about the decision to axe Top Gear "in the near future," adding that "resting the show will be disappointing news for fans, but it is the right thing to do." The hiatus won't affect the international formats of the TV show, nor the website and magazine, though the latter two will probably take a blow due to no longer receiving free advertising.

The decision to drop the show is related to Freddie Flintoff's accident, who got badly hurt when he flipped a Morgan Super 3 during the filming of series 34 last year. The presenter stayed away from the screen for a few months, and during his appearance back in September, he had multiple scars on his face. England's former cricket captain is said to have reached a settlement reportedly worth £9 million (~$11.3 million), and both he and the BBC are apparently "satisfied" with it.

Will we ever see UK's Top Gear ever again, perhaps in a slightly different format and maybe with new presenters? We think the answer is yes, as the TV show is too big a cash cow not to milk. But as BBC themselves have recently announced, they will have more to say about the future of Top Gear in due course.

Some say the UK's Top Gear has lost its appeal ever since BBC decided to sack Jeremy Clarkson due to an off-screen incident back in 2015. Jezza was followed by co-hosts Richard Hammond and James May to Amazon's Prime Video for an entirely new car program called The Grand Tour, which has seen instant success. Series 1 aired on Prime Video in 2016 and was followed by four more seasons.

At the end of the third series, the studio tent was eliminated, and the show started focusing primarily on feature-length specials. As a result, series 4 had only four episodes, and series 5 has two so far, one released in the fall of 2022 and another one that made its way to the platform earlier this year.