Tears on Top Gear with fitting salute to daredevil greatness
It is now possible to begin and end your weekend on BBC One with Paddy Mcguinness. He’s there on Friday evenings hosting A Question of Sport; the less said about that the better. And he’s back on Sunday nights with the 31st series of Top Gear. The BBC clearly thinks we can’t get enough of the guy.
I know a lot of people are unimpressed by post-clarkson Top Gear, and find Mcguinness too loud. But in this episode he delivered a wonderful little film. It was a tribute to Eddie Kidd, the motorcycle daredevil and Britain’s answer to Evel Knievel.
In a slice of nostalgia for some of us and a primer for others too young to remember, Mcguinness took viewers back to the late 1970s, when the Evel Knievel stunt cycle was the coolest toy to have but the man himself was rarely to be seen because – get this, youngsters – there was no such thing as Youtube. Then along came Kidd.
He set a new world record at 16 by jumping 14 double decker buses, jumped the Great Wall of China in 1993 and beat Evel’s son Robbie in a televised showdown. But in 1996 he suffered brain damage during an ill-fated stunt.
Mcguinness went to visit Kidd, who now communicates through a carer, and then treated him to a day out: first a drive in an open-top Rolls-royce, where dozens of motorcyclists paid tribute to him, then to a demonstration by stunt riders who either knew him from old or were inspired by him to take up the profession. It was a moving piece of television.
And as for the rest of the show? It featured all the positives and negatives of this Top Gear incarnation. Positive: Chris Harris, who knows his cars – a prerequisite for presenting a car show, you’d think, but then along comes Freddie Flintoff driving an Aston Martin Vantage F1 Edition and cheerily telling us it had “more negative camber and increased compression damping – now, I don’t know what that means but…”
Flintoff still presents like a man concentrating so hard on remembering his lines that you can almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain, and the scripted banter remains a bit cringeworthy. The supercar section threatened to be a bit dull – the TV equivalent of those posters every 10-year-old boy had on their wall next to a picture of Farrah Fawcett
– but livened up when three F1 drivers gamely joined in for a relay race.
The bit that won’t leave you, though, is the image of Eddie Kidd, huge grin on his face and fist in the air, as those riders saluted him.
The Lakes with Simon Reeve (BBC Two) started with a lady dedicated to protecting red squirrels. How sweet! Hang on, now we’re back at her house and she’s laying out pelts from all the grey squirrels she’s shot. And recommending her favourite grey squirrel recipes. Her husband likes squirrel curry, but she prefers to slow-cook them then add some porcini mushrooms. I’d say she really needs to add a sauce – white wine and cream, maybe? – but each to their own.
It was a gentle introduction to the idea that the Lake District is more than a pretty holiday destination. Reeve made his name travelling to the world’s far-flung trouble spots. Last year the pandemic forced him to stay at home and make programmes here, first in Cornwall and now Cumbria. But he brings the same journalistic intent, rooting out stories that wouldn’t make it into a tourist brochure.
The programme strives for balance. Other shows might do a nice item on rewilding and leave it at that. Reeve featured it but then went to meet a hill farmer who said that people need to “get real”. Environmentalists like George Monbiot talk about the landscape being “sheepwrecked” (a new word to me) but those sheep are how some farmers make a living. That living is getting tougher, though, as we buy cheap, imported lamb. The farmer here told Reeve he’d be better off if he stacked shelves in Tesco.
“You don’t have to keep it in, you burly chap,” said Reeve, as the farmer’s voice cracked. As a presenter, he’s inquiring and empathetic. He didn’t confine himself to the national park, visiting Barrow-in-furness and hearing tales of deprivation and domestic violence. “The Lake District is beautiful, but we’re only seeing the topcoat,” said a woman he met there.
The most remarkable story here was that of Angus, an 18-year-old running his family farm after losing both parents in the space of a year. What a huge responsibility for such a young man, and in such awful circumstances. There is so much talk of this generation being snowflakes, but the countryside breeds them tough.
Top Gear ★★★★
The Lakes with Simon Reeve ★★★★