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

There’s still the sort of dreadful ‘This car is the best car ever made... except THIS ONE’ double bluff.

There’s still the sort of overly-dramatic music that sounds like it originally came from a part in a foreign film where a man watches his daughter get shot to death in the rain in slow motion.

It’s well shot. It’s got the same unearned swagger. It’s presented by a man in a car comparing stuff to stuff, then leaving a pause, then accelerating, then shouting. It is IDENTICAL.

Into the first film. It’s about a Dodge Viper. And it is identical to the old Top Gear films. I mean identical. It’s IDENTICAL.

Interesting. No big whooshy ‘look at us’ start. Just Evans running around and LeBlanc saying as little as possible. And... oh, no, wait, there’s already been a joke about Jeremy Clarkson punching people.

The theme-tune is intact! And Chris Evans is already doing a Jeremy Clarkson impression. He sounds like a child trying to buy cigarettes in a newsagent.

OK then, let’s get this over with.

Oh God, I just had a thought. What if they’ve screwed about with the theme-tune? What it’s be re-recorded by Kasabian? What if it’s just the 1997 version of Candle in the Wind played in its entirety? That would be awful.

Incidentally, let’s pass the time before the show starts with a random sampling of The Guardian’s Top Gear coverage from the last month:

Can Top Gear survive without Jeremy Clarkson?

Tara Conlan’s report from the recording of tonight’s episode

Something I haven’t read about Matt LeBlanc being an actual juggernaut, or something

A 61-second video of John Plunkett being tossed around the inside of a car like a monkey on a rollercoaster

A column that isn’t about Top Gear at all – it’s actually about driverless cars – but has been categorised as being about Top Gear because traffic is traffic

A YouTube video of a chimpanzee on a Segway, because I’m already sick of Top Gear and the sodding thing hasn’t even bloody started yet

Hello friends, and welcome to the Top Gear liveblog. ‘Why is The Guardian liveblogging Top Gear?’ you’re asking. ‘Isn’t this just going to be like that time they liveblogged an episode of Countdown?’

Well, yes. Yes it probably is. However, we’re liveblogging the first episode of the new Clarkson-free Top Gear because this is a proper Event. Anticipation and speculation about the new series has been at fever pitch for months now, and so it feels like this first episode will either be seen as a staggering success or a miserable career-ending failure for everyone involved. It will either be the best thing anyone has seen, or the very worst. Nothing in between So why is this liveblog here? Because we’re a bunch of grotesque rubberneckers, that’s why.

Still, I for one am excited. Secretly I didn’t always hate in its previous incarnation, I think Chris Evans can be capable of making exciting television and I’m interested to see what Matt LeBlanc is like as a host. This might be quite good. At the very least, it has to be better than that godawful TFI Friday comeback. I’ve cleaned up piles of animal vomit that were better than the TFI Friday comeback.

So join me in 30 minutes for what will either be a roar of triumph, a gleeful shoeing or – in the absolute worst case – a blunt description of a competent television programme. Can’t wait, can you?