TV preview: ‘Top Gear’ and Alan Partridge are both back on the road, but which one is just going round in circles?

Top Gear, BBC2, Sunday 8pm; Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle, Sky Atlantic Monday 1pm

Matt LeBlanc and Chris Evans in the rebooted (or should that be retrunked) ‘Top Gear’ (BBC)

I’m guessing that you already know that Top Gear is back with its all-new cast, after that little disagreement between Jeremy Clarkson’s desire for a hot meal and an Irishman’s jaw sent “the boys” off to eBay or somewhere. You may or may not have loved the old format and its presenters. By the looks of things, you will very similarly like or not the old format and new presenters that we all know about.

In this first episode of six (they cost so much to make they can only do a half dozen at a go), the BBC says that Matt LeBlanc tackles Morocco in the Ariel Nomad, Chris and Matt take a soggy road to Blackpool in roofless Reliant three-wheelers, and defend the honour of their respective nations in a series of gruelling UK vs USA test – in other words, the same blend of clichés, hackneyed stunts and condescension that the old lot concocted. Motoring journalism is in enough trouble without having this to contend with. And no, I wasn’t turned down for an audition as a presenter.

Still the papa: Partridge takes on the nation (Sky TV/Colin Hutton)

Just as some people, a little self-consciously maybe, say they willingly pay the annual BBC licence fee just for Radio 4 or EastEnders or the Antiques Roadshow, so I have to say that I would be willing to take out a whole year’s subscription to Sky just so I could see Alan Partridge’s Scissored Isle.

Yet again Steve Coogan has pulled on the comfy old blouson that is the Partridge persona and delivered a surprisingly fresh portion of his staple. There is always a bit of fear among Patridgeans (I willingly confess to obsession/fandom, drawing short of an unhealthy obsession) that the next adventure will mark a moment of weakness, a turning point, a “leaping the shark”, if you will. After more than a quarter century of consistently brilliant satire, can the berk with the burgundy blazer, spectabs and stringback driving gloves still do it? The answer: a defiant yes.

The writing, this time by Coogan, Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons, is as enchantingly inventive as ever, and Coogan/Partridge supports the whole enterprise without the aid and support of the usual ensemble (Michel from the garage, Lynn the PA, Sonia the Ukrainian girlfriend, members of the Colmans mustard dynasty, etc). His journey across a chav-laden broken, or scissored, Britain takes place mostly in a Land Rover Defender with, unexplained, a mastiff with flatulence issues for company. We find him scavenging for food, for example, with a “freegan”, but ending up trapped in a warehouse over a weekend, so cold he has to use the packaging he can find for warmth, ending up looking like “the bastard love child of a bubble-wrapped honey monster and a demented Scottish widow”, subsisting on ham and egg slices and Wagon Wheels. (Still, that’s nothing on Moira Staurt who lived on quavers, Cheetos and pringles for a year – “got scurvy”).

Partidge’s accidental incarceration took place after he had been abandoned by the freegan when they tried to flee from a security guard – our vegan being someone who “could find a banquet in a bin bag but couldn’t find real balls in his own ball bag”. Alan’s is a journey of redemption for all of us.