Top Gear: Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc launch new series – as it happened

The film has ended, and now the programme is about to end. That wasn’t very good, was it? Still, thanks for reading along. Will there be a Top Gear liveblog this time next week? God no. GOD NO. Bye.

Is this running long? Do I have to punch myself in the face now? I’d better do it hard, because I’d give anything to be unconscious right about now.

This whole show feels like someone used the internet to translate Top Gear from English to Swahili and then back into English again. The intention is right but the execution is buggered beyond all belief.

Which is all well and good, except this is literally just a film of two people driving a car up a hill. Still no jokes, still no stakes, still no point.

I think I can see how this is working out now.

CHRIS EVANS: Good in the studio, rubbish in films.

MATT LEBLANC: Good in films, rubbish in the studio.

And now they’re driving their Jeeps up a hill.

More Twitter feedback, this time from a man who knows a thing or two about television programmes that experience dodgy recastings:

This is a little better actually. The challenge is simple – Evans and LeBlanc just have to drive a Jeep as fast as they can – and this have given them room to lark around and needle each other and be competitive. It’s a seed – a tiny seed, an atom of a seed, a memory of an atom of a seed – of what this show might become when it loosens up and stops being so afraid of its own shadow. I know it isn’t much, but I’m clinging to this thought like nothing else.

Back to the Blackpool film. It’s about Jeeps now. Jeeps aren’t as funny as Robin Reliants, so this might not be entirely wonderful.

Remember on the TFI Friday comeback, when Chris Evans called the controller of Channel 4, asked for an extra half an hour of airtime and got it? If he tries this tonight, I’m going to punch myself in the teeth.

I wanted to like this.

Back to the show. After a film about Chris Evans driving around wildly and trying to avoid a laser gun, we’re now being treated to a film about Matt LeBlanc driving around wildly and trying to avoid a photographer. It’s the same idea, which seems like a huge mistake for a first episode.

Tomorrow: a film about Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc driving around wildly and trying to avoid reviews.

Did you ever see the first episode of the last incarnation of Top Gear? It was rubbish. It was just as rubbish as this. Nobody knew what they were doing. James May wasn’t even in it. It took a full year for the last Top Gear to become Top Gear. So judging this new version on 43 minutes of footage seems colossally unfair. It’ll find its footing in time.

Still, this episode is still rubbish.

Right, all that’s happening now is that Matt LeBlanc is giving a fairly generic buyer’s guide about a car that nobody will ever buy. So permit me to play Devil’s Annoying Advocate for a moment.

Matt LeBlanc’s primary piece of criticism with the dune buggy is that it makes your legs wet if you drive it through a lake. I hate to be the one to point out that Matt LeBlanc could have saved himself a lot of trouble BY LOOKING AT IT FIRST, but I am the one pointing that out, so screw it.

Another film now: this time one where Matt LeBlanc tries to get inside a dune buggy with hilarious consequences.