‘Top Gear’ trio return for new Amazon series ‘The Grand Tour’
The Times’ Charles Fleming sits down with the hosts of ”The Grand Tour” to discuss the new show.
The three men who anchored the massively successful “Top Gear” automotive TV show will bring their large personalities back to the small screen Nov. 18, when Amazon Prime debuts the new series “The Grand Tour.”
Starring Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the first season will include 12 one-hour episodes, shot in exotic locations, where the three men drive, discuss and destroy various motor vehicles to comic effect.
As in “Top Gear,” which ended a 12-year syndicated run when the BBC declined to renew Clarkson’s contract following a series of friction-causing incidents involving the outspoken former auto journalist, “The Grand Tour” features globe-trotting hi-jinks laced with boyish jibes.
It will be different from “Top Gear,” the men said during a visit to The Times — but not much.
“Well, it has us three hosting it,” Clarkson said.
“And we are what we are,” Hammond added.
“(May) is slow and lost and (Hammond) is short and I am bombastic and tall, and fat,” Clarkson concluded. “It’s like shepherd’s pie and cottage pie — the same thing, with different elements.”
“The Grand Tour” does differ in two ways: It’s funded by American backers, not British, and it’s a road show.
Each episode is based in a new city, where a huge tent serves as the show’s studio. Half of each episode will be filmed with a live audience, inside the tent, with the other half made up of vehicle-centric films shot in exotic locations.
The first installment takes place in Los Angeles, with the tent sequence and some opening elements filmed in the Mojave Desert.
A reported 1 million fans were reported to have tried to get tickets to be part of the live audience in the Mojave tent.
Amazon Prime declined to confirm that number, or much of anything else. Conrad Riggs, head of unscripted programming for Amazon Originals, said in an email, “The response from customers was overwhelming and extremely exciting.”
Those who have seen bits of the footage shot there describe it as epic, entertaining and very expensive to film.
The anchors hinted that a large portion of the show’s total budget, which has been put at north of $200 million, was spent on that first sequence.
“The opening is quite big,” Hammond said.
“A couple of professional people, film people, said even Marvel would balk at the scale of what we put on in the desert,” Clarkson said.
“Getting rid of a large part of the (budget) was quite easy to achieve,” May said.
Other episodes take place in South Africa and England, but filming also was done in Portugal, Italy, Morocco, Jordan and elsewhere.
The stars were coy about exactly which vehicles they would test or torment in the series, beyond identifying one episode in which they road-ravaged a Ferrari La Ferrari, Porsche 918 and McLaren P1.
Some of the episodes “barely have a car in them,” Clarkson said. “It’s just us three, falling over.”
Others feature vehicles that would not qualify as supercars.
“We have much more fun driving really terrible old cars than new fast ones,” Clarkson said.
“Never happier,” Hammond said.
“If you take a terrible old car and put it somewhere really inappropriate,” Clarkson said, “that is when we’re happiest.”
May said enjoying the show, and the making of the show, was “the only reason to do it,” since they apparently banked a fair amount of money from “Top Gear,” which was named by Guinness World Records as the most-watched factual television show, globally, in history.
The three men have capitalized on their “Top Gear” celebrity with books, DVDs, video games and even playing cards.
The teasing between the three is a hallmark of the show. Loud, bullying Clarkson — the Moe to May and Hammond’s Larry and Curly, or perhaps the Groucho to their Chico and Harpo — is relentless in attempting to shame his two younger colleagues.
Referring to an accident that caused May a broken shoulder, he said, “The old lady had a bit of a tumble, as we say of elderly people.”
But despite the apparent camaraderie, the men do disagree on certain points.
May and Hammond share a keen interest in electric vehicles. Clarkson does not.
“God filled the deserts with oil,” he said dismissively. “Let’s use it up.”
None believes that the pending arrival of self-driving cars will put an end to the auto-mania on which they’ve based their careers.
Automated cars, Clarkson said, won’t end driving any more than cars eliminated horses.
“The horse didn’t go away — it just became a young girl’s toy,” he said. “We could beam ourselves somewhere, but I’d still own a car for the sheer joy of driving it.”
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If automated driving does become the norm, May added, “We will still use cars as pleasure things, like long boats, or Airstreams, or horses. It’ll be more fun, because the only people doing it are the people who want to do it.”
And what, many “Top Gear” fans want to know, will become of “The Stig,” the mysterious, helmeted character who did some of that show’s more dangerous driving?
Clarkson said there will be something “similar, but different.” May said, “equivalent, but better.”
The “Grand Tour” team said filming on season two — of three, to which they are committed — would begin as soon as filming on season one was completed.
‘The Grand Tour’
Where: Amazon Prime
When: Anytime starting Nov. 18
Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)
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