The BBC has confirmed that Top Gear is returning to screens four years after a crash that left presenter Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff seriously injured. The show has been off air since the accident in December 2022, when the former cricketer was driving a Morgan Super 3 at Dunsfold Aerodrome in Surrey.
Return confirmed at Edinburgh TV Festival
Ed Havard, the BBC’s director of entertainment, confirmed the news at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Thursday. Speaking at a panel event, he was asked whether the show would be returning to the national broadcaster.
He said: “There has been a lot of speculation about this and we can confirm that Top Gear is coming back. I’m not going to talk about talent today.”
Havard had been asked whether Jimmy Carr would be hosting. He replied: “Jimmy would be a great host but I won’t be discussing that today. We will have more information on Top Gear shortly.”
Background of the crash and hiatus
After the crash, the BBC said Top Gear would be “rested” for the foreseeable future, following a financial settlement with Flintoff, an agreement reportedly worth around £9 million. The car, which did not have a roof, flipped upside down and skidded on the tarmac before coming to a stop. Flintoff was taken to hospital with facial and rib injuries.
Flintoff previously revealed he was deeply impacted by the crash and did not leave his house for six months other than to attend medical appointments. Speaking on Piers Morgan Uncensored, he said: “You know, I suffer from PTSD. I have flashbacks and nightmares, but I’ve probably got more of an acceptance of them now.”
History of the show
The original Top Gear series ran from 1977 until 2001, and was revived in 2002. The first season of the revived format was presented by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and Jason Dawe, with an anonymous test driver, The Stig, also featuring. In the second season, Dawe was replaced by James May, with the line-up remaining unchanged until the end of the twenty-second season, when the BBC did not renew Clarkson’s contract after he punched a producer.
Clarkson gave producer Oisin Tymon a bloody lip in a bust-up in March 2015. His contract was not renewed, and he issued a formal apology in a deal to settle a racial discrimination and personal injury claim. His exit saw his co-hosts also leave Top Gear, with the trio signing up for another motoring show – the Amazon Prime Video series The Grand Tour.
TV presenter and radio DJ Chris Evans and Friends star Matt LeBlanc then took over as hosts, but Evans left after just six episodes. The show also received criticism after LeBlanc and a rally driver performed “doughnuts” near the Cenotaph war memorial in London’s Whitehall.
Another new line-up was unveiled in 2019, including Flintoff alongside motoring presenter and journalist Rory Reid and comedian and actor Paddy McGuinness. Three years after joining the series, Flintoff nearly died following the crash at Dunsfold Aerodrome.
Flintoff's recovery and documentary
In the Disney+ documentary Flintoff, released last year, the presenter admitted that after the accident he did not think he had it in him to “get through”. He said: “This sounds awful … part of me wishes I’d been killed. Part of me thinks, I wish I’d died. I didn’t want to kill myself … I wouldn’t mistake the two things. I was not wishing, I was just thinking, ‘this would have been so much easier’.”
Reflecting on his recovery, the former England cricket captain said his then three-and-a-half-year-old son Preston “wouldn’t come near me”. “I think it frightened him, my face, it frightened me. That was heartbreaking,” he said in the documentary. “I’ve got PTSD and I get anxious, for periods of time, I just find myself crying for no particular reason.”
Flintoff also said he relived the crash every night when he goes to bed and described the experience as a “vivid” movie. “Even the memories of it are real, to the point where now I’m talking about it and I’m getting a bit jittery and I can feel the pain on the side of my face. I can feel like a phantom pain. It’s like a bit of a curse, really,” he said.
