It doesn't take a genius to realise that the recently-finished Series 23 of Top Gear has been given one helluva bashing. The show was seen by many to be in jeopardy the moment Jeremy Clarkson's contract wasn't renewed, and even stunts that kept Top Gear grounded in its roots were met with a metric ton of criticism. As a result of the incredibly mixed reception (along with Chris Evans' departure), it's of no surprise to hear that the BBC is seemingly pulling the plug on all new Top Gear UK broadcasts for the rest of the year.

According to a report by Metro, a free daily newspaper in the UK, an insider at the BBC has revealed that "the team will be working towards bringing the show back sometime in early 2017". Alongside articles from The Daily Telegraph that state the two Christmas specials (along with the 12 other pre-Series-24 episodes which were allegedly in the works) will be scrapped, it's looking very much the case that 2016 will be the first time a new Top Gear episode hasn't been shown on TV during the festive season since 2007. Of course, the BBC has yet to officially state what on Earth is actually going on outside of adding more and more shows to Chris Harris' resume, but these new claimed leaks aren't filling us with confidence.

One key benefit of such a long wait between the close of Series 23 and the start of Series 24, though, is that it gives the BBC and the remaining Top Gear team the chance to regroup, assess the damage and start putting the foundations in place for a hopefully stellar new series of Top Gear in 2017. Given it's going to be another five or so months until Top Gear returns to our screens, it's good to know we'll soon not only have The Grand Tour to keep us occupied, but also the BBC filling in the TG void with a dose of new 'Chris Harris Drives' episodes. Put simply, we're glad we won't have to rely solely on the new Robot Wars reboot in order to get our machine-based entertainment fix for the remainder of 2016 on terrestrial television.