Top Gear (2002 TV series)
British automotive television show, 2002-2022
Top Gear is a British motoring-themed magazine television programme. It is a revival of the 1977–2001 show of the same name for the BBC, devised by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman, which premiered on 20 October 2002. The programme expanded upon its earlier incarnation which focused on reviewing cars to incorporate films featuring motoring-based challenges, races, timed laps of notable cars, and celebrity timed laps on a specially-designed track. The programme drew acclaim for its visual and presentation style, as well as criticism over the controversial nature of some content. The programme aired on BBC Two until it was moved to BBC One in 2020.
The programme's first series in 2002 was presented by Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and Jason Dawe, with an anonymous test driver "The Stig" also featuring. Wilman was the show's executive producer. Following the first series, Dawe was replaced by James May, with the line-up unchanged until the end of the twenty-second series, when the BBC chose to not renew Clarkson's contract in March 2015, following an incident during filming. His dismissal from Top Gear prompted the departure of Hammond, May and Wilman from the programme, who joined Clarkson on a new motoring series for Amazon, The Grand Tour.
Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc were appointed as new hosts of Top Gear and they were joined by four co-presenters for the twenty-third series.
“Top Gear (2002 TV series)” enters the record as british automotive television show, 2002-2022. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gear, series and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Top Gear (2002 TV series)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Gear, series and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q33162. VIAF identifies the subject as 184456118. The Library of Congress control number is n2009031634. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 2001, 2002 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Top Gear (2002 TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.