‘The Grand Tour’, the new motoring show presented by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, has now had its first episode.
Available only to Amazon Prime subscribers, details about the content of the new show were sparse in the months prior to release. Trailers and soundbites indicated that the show would bear similarities to ‘Top Gear’ when it was hosted by the notorious trio – specifically the ‘Top Gear’ specials that focused mostly on car travelling adventures and shenanigans across the world. However, now the first episode is out, the proof is in the pudding. For ALA GAP Insurance, ‘The Grand Tour’ is everything that brought ‘Top Gear’ to global popularity, with all the cars, adventure and antics fans have come to expect from Clarkson, Hammond and May – but with a few differences.
Highly popular format points such as The Stig, the Star in a Reasonably Price Car and the famous Dunsfold race track are gone, as they all still legally belong to the BBC. But the main ingredient of Clarkson, Hammond and May’s undeniable creative chemistry built on what May refers to as a “mutual loathing of each other” is still very much in force on ‘The Grand Tour’. Emanating from a new location in the world each week (this debut episode coming from California), the trio brings us a programme that Jeremy Clarkson described in an interview with Autoblog as ‘shepherd’s pie’. “It’s lamb, not beef,” he said. “It’s still comfort food. It’s still a very nice pie, but it’s slightly different. It has to be, obviously, because the steak is gone.” And this is an accurate summation of ‘The Grand Tour’. It’s all the banter, cars and escapades fans came to enjoy in their millions across the world but dressed up slightly differently.
Amazon kept their cards close to their chest prior to the show’s release in terms of the show’s content. All we knew about the content was that it would feature the former ‘Top Gear’ presenters in both grandiose motoring film segments and studio segments – shot in front of an audience in a massive tent located in a new country each week.