Top Gear dominates March’s iPlayer charts with 3.6m views

top-gear-season-22-620Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear dominated the BBC’s iPlayer charts last month with more than 3.6 million requests.

The show’s sixth episode, in which Richard Hammond was stranded in Canada so teammates James May and Clarkson could use a GPS watch to locate and rescue him, was seen by 2.17m viewers.

Episode 7, the final episode to be broadcast after Clarkson was dropped by BBC boss Lord Tony Hall for hitting one of the show’s producers, clocked up 1.48m requests.

Their closest completion was an episode of The Voice (1.2m) and the opening episode of Poldark (1.19m).

Top Gear’s continued good performance on iPlayer is likely to fuel speculation that Clarkson and his co-stars are set to move to Netflix – the popular streaming service is increasingly seen as their likeliest next home.

Speculation that the trio are working on their own motoring show grew yesterday after May said he wouldn’t return to the BBC series without Clarkson and the show’s executive producer, Andy Wilman, quit the series.

Netflix is known to be looking for new shows to boost its appeal, key to which is replicating the success its had with big dramas such as House of Cards in other genres.

Bookies PaddyPower are offering odds of 5/2 that Clarkson & co are cooking up another motoring show to hit screens before the end of next year and have Netflix as the 4/1 favourite to air it.

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