I found Matt Leblanc a little dull. What I mean by that is firstly he sounds incredibly monotone during the voice overs, but his reactions to the things chris Evans says feel forced. There is certainly a lack of chemistry there and Chris comes across as overly enthusiastic and he tries too hard to create banter with Leblanc.
I thought Chris Evans' review of the cars ie when he drove them at the start was too similar to the way Jeremy did it, but worse. He tried to copy Jeremy's presenting style there by shouting in the car and as it accelerated etc.
The three wheeled car segment was supposed to be the funny bit, the part they added to try and recreate the humour that old top gear was famous for.
I thought the idea of driving the cars to Blackpool was OK. But I didn't find it funny, there was no real humour and banter between the presenters and I almost feel that Matts car was purposely made to break down several times because again, that is what happened on old top gear. I wouldn't have been surprised if Chris Evans had announced he was "going to just drive away" and leave Leblanc to fiddle with the engine in true top gear style.
I thought the challenges in Blackpool were poor. Seeing who's could go faster down that stretch of the beach was not exciting at all. Getting the mayor or whoever it was involved was again a poor attempt to create comedy. The tug of war was destined to fail given the fact you have two fairly heavy cars on sand.
The worst part was possibly the star in the rally cross car. I don't know why he got that Jessie bloke to come on WITH Gordon Ramsey? The two are unrelated and usually the only time two people come on is once in a blue moon and if they both have the same job like two news presenters or Cameron Diaz and Tom cruise because they have done films together. Perhaps new top gear couldn't have one star as it would mean Chris Evans would have to find more interesting things to talk about to that individual and we know now that is a struggle. The audience cheering (clearly forced by Chris swearing at them before the cameras started rolling) was bad. No one cares who had the better first car?
Overall it was in my opinion not good. I found about 2% of it mildly amusing but I don't know if that was genuine amusement of just me laughing at the awkwardness of what I have just watched.