The Grand Tour formula intact
Humour, danger remain part of Amazon show
Filming for Season Two of The Grand Tour, which airs on Amazon Prime, took an ominous turn in June when Richard Hammond, one of the trio of stars headlining the show, had a serious crash in a Rimac Concept One electric car in Switzerland.
Losing control on a hill climb, Hammond and the 1,224- horsepower supercar rolled down a steep embankment, where the car burst into flames. The Rimac was completely destroyed, while the diminutive star ended up with a fractured knee. It could have been much worse.
Today, however, the stars can joke about it.
“Hammond is seven millimetres shorter than he was,” says co-host James May. “But only on one side.”
It’s that kind of flippancy and insouciance that has attracted viewers to Hammond, May and Jeremy Clarkson since they were originally teamed together on the wildly popular BBC show, Top Gear, before forming this new show last year. And lest you think this crash — the second serious entanglement for Hammond over the years — will make them ease off the throttle with their second show, you’d be terribly, and fortunately, wrong. At least, for the most part.
“Unlike ( Hammond), I recognize cars have brake pedals,” says Clarkson. “He crashed two kilometres after the finish line, which is quite an achievement, really. But the only news is that it made the schedule difficult.”
May, however, is a little more reflective.
“I decided after a lot soul searching that I wouldn’t drive off the edge of a cliff. But more seriously, yes, it does make me think, when we are out, particularly when we are in the middle of nowhere, that we ought to be a bit careful.”
Careful or not, the trio has continued to put themselves in harm’s way across the world, all in the name of entertainment and the love of cars.
“One of the guys we travel with is an ex- special forces sort of bloke, and he is quite blunt, you know, he doesn’t mince his words,” says May. “And he says, ‘ You all puck about doing these things and there are some places where if you fall off the edge you might survive. But if we can’t get you, you’d probably starve or bleed to death.’ And I thought, ‘yes, actually, he is right.’”
This element of danger — perceived or otherwise — has always been part of the draw of Top Gear and now The Grand Tour, whether it be driving cars off a cliff, or taking one of the most dangerous roads in the world in Bolivia, or even tempting furious mobs with a mocking licence plate in Argentina. And while there is a certain amount of planning involved in each episode, it’s the surprises that make the magic, according to Clarkson.
“You can say, we’ll go here and we’ll do that,” he says. “At this point we will talk about this stuff, this stuff, and so on. But what actually gets said, when something doesn’t go true to plans, if a car breaks down or James falls over or Richard Hammond catches fire, that’s not scripted, obviously. We are freestyling it. And that is totally unscripted.
“There are certain elements that need to push the story along that are scripted. The actual things that happen are unscripted. You can’t script what’s going to happen when you put yourself in an old car in the middle of Bolivia. You can’t script if something bad happens. And it usually does.
“You always want something bad to happen. On The Grand Tour we love failure. It is a show where we don’t do what we set out to do.”
But searching f or adventure goes beyond the scenery and the cars, even beyond expecting the unexpected. There has to be a reason for each story, and Clarkson describes the creative process behind the glamorous shots.
“Usually James and I wait for Richard to go on holiday and then we discuss where we are going and what we are doing. But the critical thing is, you have to find a story. Once you have the story, it tends to tell you where you are going in the world.” Hammond agrees. “We l i ke to probe the boundaries of accepted thought and conceit. It is all intellectually driven.”
And then he replies as you’d expect of The Grand Tour guys.
“No, i t’s ’ cause we are idiots. It is driven by petulance and childishness.”
WE LIKE TO PROBE THE BOUNDARIES OF ACCEPTED THOUGHT.