What is it?
Fronted by Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, The Grand Tour (which launches on Amazon Prime on Friday) is a TV show about cars. There will also be a live audience, exotic locations, celebrity guests, stunts, a track, a lot of larking about...
Sounds a bit like…
Stop it, I know what you’re going to say. This will be nothing like a certain BBC car show these clowns used to present, also produced by Andy Wilman, who came with them. They, and their lawyers specially, are eager to point out that GT ≠ TG. No Stig, no Star in a Reasonably Priced Car, no Cool Wall – how much more different do you want? Nevertheless, they are aware that the BBC legal department will be keeping an eye on it, to see if any intellectual property laws are being broken.
Jeff Bezos has splashed a bit of cash, right?
Amazon is said to have paid £160m for 36 one-hour shows, which will go out over three years. Or, put another way, nought to £4.4m in 60 minutes. The opening sequence alone – a Mad Max-style chase across the Californian desert involving 150 cars, 2,000 extras, stilt-walkers, fire-eaters and a squadron of jets – cost nearly £2.5m.
How much are the presenters getting?
Hardly anything. They’re doing it for the love … (We don’t know).
What else don’t we know?
Who the celebrity guests will be. Whether they’ll be sued if there’s racism or Clarkson punches a producer, because that’s what they used to do on the old show. (Unlikely to be honest; the BBC might not want to keep ownership of those.)
What do we know?
Instead of a studio – too much like Top Gear – the audience bit will be done in a tent.
Like a circus?
Actually Clarkson got the idea from a baptist church tent he saw on True Detective; the only difference is that in this one people will come to worship him, not God. Hallelujah, praise Clarkson.
There are two tents, which will leapfrog each other round the world: South Africa, California, Lapland, Germany (careful Jezza), Loch Ness, Whitby and Dubai. Each tent takes eight days to put up, three to pull down, and has a crew of 114 people.
Any disasters that we know about?
James May nearly drowned in Venice. And he broke his arm “falling out of a pub”, says Andy Wilman. Hammond was involved in a knife fight in Jordan, though that sounds more street than it was; they were training with special forces. And Clarkson got cold in the desert of Namibia because he packed the wrong clothes.
Forget all that. What about the cars?
The first episode will feature a race between three hybrid supercars: a McLaren P1, a Porsche 918 Spyder and Ferrari LaFerrari. In Italy they were mobbed by thousands of fans when Clarkson told people to “come along” to the Piazza in Vicenza. He showed up in an Aston Martin DB11, with May in a Rolls-Royce and Hammond in a Dodge Challenger SRT Hellcat.
There will be old Maseratis in France, and Beetle beach buggies in Namibia (no windows, hence the chill). Hammond will also build a doomsday-proof “bug-out” vehicle, which might turn out to be prescient given recent world events.
How much is it to subscribe to Amazon Prime?
You can a have month-long free trial, after which it’s £5.99 a month. But you can’t binge the lot in your free month as they’re only releasing one per week, almost like old-school TV (remember?)
It’s filmed in 4K – what will that mean?
That you’ll be able to see every pore of 155-year-old (collective, admittedly) skin and Clarkson’s individual nasal hairs in super high definition.
Best anagram of The Grand Tour?
Hated Rug Torn
