Top Gear has finally got its first post-Clarkson season out of the way. It might not have been pretty, or funny, or interesting, or particularly well-watched, but at least the show now has something to work with. There’s a body of work, six hours of television where before there were only hypotheticals; six hours that can now be buffed and chopped and rearranged to ensure that Top Gear can return in better shape next time.

'So boring it barely exists': readers review the new Top Gear Read more

So, for the benefit of anyone in the Top Gear production team, here’s a definitive list of everything that should be kept from this year, everything that should be scrapped, and everything that was missing. You are welcome.

KEEP! The look of the show

Despite the personnel changes, Top Gear remains a beautiful television programme to look at. This last series was designed, shot and edited with the same amount of care as any other before it. Without exception, the look of Top Gear’s films this year has been the best thing about it.

SCRAP! The celebrity interviews

Star in a Reasonably Priced Car was always boring. But it’s been replaced with a Two Almost-Stars in an Interminable Rally Car mess that may well be the single most boring thing that has ever been invented in the entire course of human history. The interviews are soggy, the stars insipid and the racing is, without fail, abjectly tedious. At least a quarter of each new Top Gear episode is taken up by this dreck, which is just unforgivable.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tinie Tempah, Sharleen Spiteri, Eddie Jordan, Chris Evans, Seasick Steve and Matt LeBlanc face off for the interminable rally car segment. Photograph: Desmond Louw/BBC Worldwide

MISSING! The news

If new Top Gear feels like it hasn’t got a soul – and that’s exactly how it feels – that’s because they canned the old news segment. The bit where the hosts sat around and waffled at each other is nowhere to be seen any more, and that’s ridiculous. More than anything else – more than the films or the reviews or the interviews – the news defined Top Gear’s entire tone. It was bullish and opinionated, and full of good-natured ribbing. It gave the presenters room to breathe, which helped their personalities to surface, which endeared them to the public. This new lot are tap dancing so frantically that we don’t really know who they are yet. The reintroduction of news would solve this instantly.

SCRAP! The Stig

Some say he stopped being entertaining about a decade ago. Some say the bit where he drives an impractically expensive car around a track in an identical way every week is the undoubted low point of every episode. Some say he’s only being kept because he represents a decent source of merchandising revenue for BBC Worldwide. All we know is, he’s called the Stig, and if he’s back next year then God help us all.

KEEP! Chris Harris

Now that the two main Top Gear hosts are a radio DJ and a sitcom actor, the show finds itself in desperate need of legitimacy. This year, that has come in the form of occasional presenter Chris Harris. His films have been whip-smart, clearly rooted in journalism rather than dumb enthusiasm. He needs to be a bigger part of Top Gear, in the studio, every week, as the grownup of the group.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Matt LeBlanc and Chris Harris. Photograph: John Rogers/BBC Worldwide

SCRAP! Eddie Jordan

Although Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc have been polarising, at least they contributed something. Eddie Jordan, meanwhile, just sort of turned up every couple of weeks to silently gurn for a few minutes and then go home again. Two weeks ago, the only thing he did in the entire episode was sit on a train. A shop dummy could have done that. A bag of flour could have done that. A dog in a monocle could have done that. Eddie Jordan is the least relevant part of an already fairly irrelevant series, and fat needs to be trimmed.

INTRODUCE! You know, some fun

I don’t know, guys, just try to make it look like this is a fun programme to make. Laugh a little. Improvise. Crack jokes. Be rude about Mexicans. Punch a man in the face. Anything, so long as it brings a little of the old sparkle back.