The Grand Tour: “a giant ego trip”

“Shhh. Listen carefully,” said Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. “Can you hear it?” That strange noise is the sound of BBC executives gnashing their teeth over Jeremy Clarkson. Almost two years ago, the outspoken Top Gear host parted ways with the Beeb after punching a producer during a row about food. Last week, he and his two co-presenters roared back with The Grand Tour, a new show on Amazon Prime that has won mostly rave reviews. With a budget of £4.5m per episode, the show is like the old Top Gear, only bigger and brasher. It should really have been called “Clarkson Unchained”. There are more fast cars, more explosions and more politically incorrect banter. “We’re going to be like gypsies,” declared Clarkson in the opening episode, referring to the show’s peripatetic tent studio. “Only the cars we drive are going to be insured.” downsides, too. While “geeks” may have delighted in the first episode’s car-testing sequence, it tried my patience. Indeed, I felt the whole 70-minute programme needed more editing. There’s a danger the series may end up looking “less like a Grand Tour than a giant ego trip”.

Judging the popularity of The Grand Tour won’t be easy, said Jane Martinson in The Guardian, because online streaming services aren’t obliged to issue viewing figures. The producers will instead have to monitor social media to judge the public reaction. Amazon, for its part, is hoping the show will spearhead the expansion of Amazon Prime subscribers around the world. In this respect, the show is “symbolic of the changes in the global TV industry”. The “timeless nature of online TV” raises challenges, said Ian Hyland in the Daily Mirror. It means the “rather contrived topical chat section” of The Grand Tour won’t be topical for long. Some have also questioned how long Clarkson et al will be able simply to travel the world insulting foreign audiences. “Well, they managed to get away with it for 12 years on Top Gear, so…”