LONDON — “Top Gear” doesn’t do understatement.
If it were a car, the BBC’s hit auto show would be a flashy, precision-tooled racer. Co-host Chris Evans calls it “a car-show nuclear bomb” — and it returns to the screen facing the fallout of former host Jeremy Clarkson’s explosive exit.
The show’s fusion of blokey banter, consumer advice and adrenaline-fueled automotive stunts in far-flung locations made it a huge hit, watched — according to the BBC — by 350 million people around the world.
The “Top Gear” formula, fine-tuned over many years under the brash Clarkson, has brought both success and controversy. Clarkson and his fellow presenters left last year after an off-set dustup in which Clarkson punched a producer (he later apologized and paid damages). Now the show is back, fronted by Evans and actor Matt LeBlanc, zooming away from his best-known incarnation as Joey Tribbiani from “Friends.”
“When I was first starting out, I always wanted my career to take me to exotic places,” LeBlanc said during an interview in London. “And I ended up in a building in Burbank for 12 years with no windows.”
He’s making up for it now. Filming for the six-episode season of “Top Gear” has taken the crew to Morocco, South Africa, Italy, Kazakhstan, the U.S. and the gaudy English seaside resort of Blackpool. LeBlanc has driven an Ariel Nomad dune buggy in the Moroccan desert and raced Evans up South Africa’s treacherous Sani Pass — one of several hair-raising experiences.
“Some of the things we do, it was like, ‘Really? This is all insured? Huh. Because that’s a big cliff right there,”‘ LeBlanc said.
“You’re constantly fighting (between) ‘I want to win’ and ‘it’s just a TV show,’ ” he said. “You want to make it entertaining, but you also want to make it.”
In the new-look “Top Gear” — premiering Sunday in Britain and Monday on BBC America — LeBlanc and Evans are joined by German driver Sabine Schmitz, former motorsport boss Eddie Jordan, auto journalists Chris Harris and Rory Reid and anonymous, helmeted driver The Stig.
Evans, a veteran British TV and radio host, says the format has been tweaked, but the essence of the program remains. He say fans — he counts himself among them — “don’t want us to reinvent the wheel.”
Evans says he is relaxed about the competition, and pays credit to Clarkson and his colleagues for fusing car journalism with the wild spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.
