On one hand, they made a giant leap forward. And then I'm talking about the features, like the AMV8 one and the double GT one: well filmed, some nice touches (though I was left wondering if Harrier just was something to make the review more interesting or if they wanted to show us they also can do some review with the British Air Force like Top Gear did).
On the other hand, they also made a big step in the wrong direction. The office just is a complete rip off of Top Gear’s studio. And it felt so cheap, as did VBH's hair job. Also the fact they changed their shoot out format into a lap time board just show they are fellow travelling Top Gear. The fact they still want to put some immature jokes against Top Gear in their show really annoys me.
After watching the complete episode, I think I’d rather like the old 30 min format. Their current 1 hour format contains 15 minutes of commercials, and I can't dispose myself of the fact they filled the other 15 extra minutes with utter crap or boring stuff. In the new format they are talking constantly between the reviews. Whereas the Top Gear presenters have enough charisma to make it interesting (or piss their colleague presenters off which makes it interesting
), they just don't have it, which ruins my global opinion about the show. They just have to stick to the reviews, and not waste money on the talking liaisons in between, cause they suck at it.
In short: the new review were a real improvement, but they just have to cut the '5th Gear office' scenes out of it to give me an overall good impression of the show.