If you’re a fan of old-school Top Gear, it may have occurred to you once or twice to seek it out on modern streaming platforms. Suffice it to say, that can be challenging, especially for those of us who don’t live in the BBC’s traditional coverage area. I can watch The Great British Baking Show on Netflix all day long, but original cuts of Clarkson-Hammond-May-era TG are far trickier to come by, especially if you rely on Google.
But forget search engines; we want piston engines—and rotary engines, jet engines, rocket motors, and, well, you get the idea. And if you’re like us, you’re in luck. You can stream original, complete (so far as we can tell, anyway) episodes of the BBC series to your heart’s content on multiple free, ad-supported platforms, including Pluto TV, Amazon’s Freevee (which is being de-branded into the broader Prime Video portfolio), and Plex.
We found it on Pluto TV, which has not just one, but two ways to watch classic episodes. You can set it to the Top Gear channel and simply let Pluto play the series in order (We’ll call that “Daytime TV style”), or you can explore individual episodes on demand.
And if you’re expecting the same repackaged episodes you’ve seen on American TV, you may be pleasantly surprised. From what we’ve had time to sample, it appears that all of the episodes appear in their original, unedited length, including full “Star in a Reasonably Priced Car” segments. Yes, even the early ones, where it’s pretty clear the BBC just booked whatever random celebrity happened to be walking through the lobby that day.
All that said, the most diehard Top Gear fans will know that this isn’t exactly news. The BBC has been expanding the availability of its legacy portfolio on various streaming services for years, and based on a cursory search, it appears that Top Gear made it into rotation sometime in late 2022. There are also, shall we say, less scrupulous ways to watch classic TG episodes, but anyone who was paying attention 15 years ago is already familiar with those. The fact this free channel is both legal and simple to access makes it a no-brainer, and, if you’re like us, it will probably replace whatever mindless background programming you typically leave on your TV for hours on end.
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