There hasn’t been as much fuss made over the latest series of Top Gear (BBC Two, Sunday, 6 December, 8.30pm) as there normally has. Maybe it’s because everyone is talking about The X Factor Results programme that’s being shown on the other side (not to suggest that these programmes somehow share huge chunks of audience, but y’know, critics can only watch so much TV).

Catching up with the show on iPlayer, I thought I’d see what the Top Gear gang were up to these days. As ever, Clarkson was brash, May was fusty and Hammond was… well… irritating and playing the cutesy card. Effectively, it was the same as it ever was.

Despite the fact it was The Same Old Top Gear, which in the past, has been roundly applauded for being, well, daft as a brush and perfect, mindless entertainment at the close of the weekend, something has begun to irritate.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. The challenges are brilliantly dumb and the reviews are masterclasses in taking the piss… however, where I once admired the sheer bloody cheek, now I find myself slightly disinterested and tetchy.

Then it hit me. Top Gear is the new TFI Friday.

Once TFI was a must-watch pre-pint TV show which featured burping, pints, music and some aping for laughs. Sure, it was a programme very much of its time… but it was a show that pretty much everyone I knew watched before they scuttled off to the pub. Top Gear is aiming at the same people who are now a little older. People who have replaced pork scratchings for clutches.

However, like TFI, the show has suddenly started to feel a little flat for absolutely no reason at all. When it returned to our screens with May and Hammond in tow, it felt fresh and anarchic… now it seems to be far too knowing. The same fate that befell TFI Friday. It’s head has grown too bloated. It has started to believe its own hype.

Of course, both of these shows were already pretty self-aware and pig-headed, but without the moments of craft, the show comes across as a bit too boorish. Whilst there are still millions who still love the show unreservedly, it almost seems like a segment of the viewing public is now walking away from the show with a disinterested shrug.

However, this is Top Gear we’re talking about. They’ll have some preposterous, ludicrous and brilliant challenge up their sleeve which will knock everything else into a cocked skull. Last night may have just been a small blip in preparation for the big Christmas explode-off.