Like so many things involving Jeremy Clarkson, the message from the opening scene of his new programme turned out to be not very subtle.
With a budget of Hollywood proportions – £2.5m just for this set piece – the Grand Tour’s opening scene at midnight on Thursday featured Clarkson and co-presenters James May and Richard Hammond in red, white and blue Ford Mustangs leading a convoy of 150 vehicles to a huge tent in the Californian desert.
As I Can See Clearly Now played in the background – with “bright, sunshiny days” banishing all those “obstacles”, “dark clouds” and “rain” – the symbolism of the new TV show on Amazon was all too clear: Clarkson was telling viewers he was now liberated from the British bureaucratic shackles of Top Gear at the BBC to roam in the Land of the Free.
In an interview before the first episode was released, Andy Wilman, the programme’s executive producer and an old school friend of Clarkson, spelled it out: “We just wanted to be free again. It’s a bit symbolic.”
The Grand Tour also represents a second chance for Clarkson, who had repeatedly run into controversy, which culminated in him punching Top Gear producer Oisin Tymon in the face, after calling him “lazy and Irish” and threatening to get him sacked for failing to provide a hot dinner.
Wilman has suggested that too can be read into the expensive opening scene. In other interviews, the producer described it, with its echoes of the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada, as a bit of a “rebirth” – although he almost immediately fretted that this sounded a bit “vegan”. He told the Guardian that he did not mean it in a “super-emotional way”.
But Wilman said he was also nervous of any suggestion of being anti-BBC, despite the acrimonious nature of the split, which led to himself, Hammond and May quitting the corporation.
“It’s symbolic of the open road,” he said. “It’s a gentler symbolism than: ‘Yay, we’ve all left the BBC!’ Because we all love the BBC.”
At an estimated cost of £160m for three series, the Grand Tour is also symbolic of the changes in the global TV industry. Streamed by Amazon Prime video with a cost per hour of roughly £4m, the subscriber-only show is costing the US retail giant more than six times the BBC budget for Top Gear.
But while the BBC, as a licence fee-funded broadcaster, is dependent on achieving high ratings to be judged a critical success, Amazon is not expected to release any viewing figures, or to tell how many extra £79 subscriptions it will sell as a result of buying up Clarkson and his team.
The internet giant, best-known for ecommerce but expanding rapidly into TV and gadgets, is so large it is not obliged to disclose such information.
Top Gear had a pretty universal appeal with women comprising 40% of its viewers, according to Amazon research.
“One of the most annoying things is that people said it was macho show and it never was,” said Wilman, who has the unshaven face and haunted quality of a man who has had to edit down 5,000 hours of footage for 12 episodes.
“It is a journey in the male brain, which is a void, so it’s quite nice place to go for a bit of downtime.”
Faced with lawyers paid to make sure that the BBC could not sue for any copyright infringement on a show which is still its most valuable asset, watched by 350 million people in 212 territories at its peak, the tent guarantees a different studio setting in every location rather than the anonymous hangar setting used in Top Gear for segments such as the cool wall or the presenters’ version of the news.
With no Stig, nor Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, the studio was the main thing, as the team believe the essential dynamic between the three men cannot be copyrighted to the BBC. In Clarkson’s words, the Grand Tour is still “three middle-aged men in poor condition, falling over and catching fire … and occasionally a car goes by”.
A trailer in the first episode suggests that the old Top Gear of the trio larking about amid explosions and crashes is unchanged. In one scene, Clarkson asks if they’re ready to race and Hammond replies: “Honestly, I’m not sure.”
“The films are still three men fucking about in their own little bubble, wasting everyone’s time,” said Wilman. “They’re an expensive exercise in doing nothing and there’s a sort of therapy in that in this mentally fast modern age. We’re not doing anything dramatically different from what we did before.”
Amazon executive Jay Marine, who hopes the show will spearhead the expansion of Amazon Prime subscriber numbers around the world and particularly in the UK, has even downplayed the fact that the Grand Tour is a car show, calling it “a buddy movie”.
One episode which caused concern is the forthcoming 90-minute New Year special set in Namibia, which the legal team worried would have too many echoes of an old Top Gear episode filmed in Botswana. Of less concern was a Christmas episode set in Lapland.
Locations were a large part of the budget, although no one on the team has ever confirmed the sums.
“I’m not talking about money,” said Wilman. “The numbers are nonsensical now, they’re so big … we’re not earning footballer money as so much is going on the show.”
