[madmusician]

I’m sure I recall reading that the HSE assigned no blame to the BBC in their report on the incident (although somebody please correct me if I am wrong about this), but clearly the BBC’s internal report would have been more thorough and it does sound as though they have ruled that something went wrong that could have been avoided.

Whilst times change, I think it would be remarkable for the programme to end over this incident when it continued through Richard Hammond’s far more severe accident, the various controversies towards the end of the Clarkson era (the racial jokes, that outtake, the Argentinian stuff), not to mention the fracas and then the Evans era when it was such tabloid fodder.

I agree that the current iteration is the best it’s been since the Clarkson days (although I have a soft spot for the Le Blanc/Harris era, as it had some really classy travel films in it) but it isn’t the same ‘public interest’ show as it used to be (in terms of behind the scenes news being all across the tabloids etc), which is why they’ve been able to keep this incident reasonably quiet and delay making any decision until over three months later.

I would be surprised to see the whole format come to an end on UK TV, as it is still a lucrative property for the BBC (how is it selling internationally these days, both the format itself - for the local versions - and the showing of the UK version?) and, as I mentioned above, this seems like a reasonably low-key incident for the show to end over, although I don’t doubt the distress caused to Flintoff himself and the production and presentation team.

Would McGuinness and Harris wish to continue with another presenter brought in, and would it seem insensitive to do so (also taking into account the impact of this incident on the production team)? I think that’s what is being weighed up right now, and there’s no rush for that decision to be made. They could resume production later in the year for a spring 2024 series and still keep the current team (minus Flintoff) if they wanted to.

Worth pointing out that Harris-fronted videos have been making their way to the Top Gear YouTube channel, and I suspect that these have been made since this incident, so clearly he hasn’t cut his ties with the programme entirely at this point.