I'll freely admit i am kind of glad its gone, three blokes in their 50's making crass scripted jokes smacked of running out of ideas towards the end. Still was the best show on 'free' tv.
Yeah, it got to the point where they weren't just cracking the same jokes, but recreating entire sections of the exact same feature from previous series. People still lapped it up as it was still largely good, but it was painful at times and you could argue it desperately needed freshening up.
We get the best of both worlds now, they hopefully will get to make their show as they want on ITV/Netflix, and we get another decent TV show which is a bit different on the beeb.
We're all winners.
New new Top Gear will still be one of the best shows on TV once the pressure and awkwardness has worn off. Evans will divide opinion exactly the way Clarkson did, so some viewers will leave, some will arrive. The ratings will be down, of course, but when Top Gear relauched in 2002 the ratings were pretty damn poor anyway. You'd be nuts not to expect the same to happen - highish ratings for the first show or two, followed by a large dip, then they'll start rising again if it makes it through the first series and the chemistry among the presenters grows. Given time it'll be exactly as 'new' Top Gear evolved.
The difference here is that social media will likely play a large part in whether Top Gear v3 has any mileage, but I hope the BBC sticks up two fingers and keeps at it.
And we get a motoring show, probably not unlike the current Top Gear somewhere else, keeping the same presenters and with a large budget off the bat.
I have to say I'm surprised ITV can afford them though - Clarkson, Hammond and May as a package could demand pretty much whatever they wanted.
