SURVIVAL OF THE SMARTEST

RICHARD HAMMOND’S MAROONED IN PARADISE WITH A NEW SIDEKICK FOR HIS LATEST SHOW – BUT THE TWIST IS THE TWO DESERT ISLAND DESPERADOES MUST USE SCIENCE TO STAY ALIVE UNTIL THEY’RE RESCUED

As one of the hosts of Top Gear and then The Grand Tour, Richard Hammond’s work has taken him to some of the most exotic, far-flung corners of the world. And his new series The Great Escapists, which sees him cast away on an idyllic island off the coast of Panama, goes a step further, leaving him marooned on what must be the most perfect slice of paradise imaginable.

Yet even when he’s surrounded by white sand, palm trees and stunning beauty, the old romantic says he spends every TV shoot wishing he was with Mindy, his wife of nearly 20 years, and their two daughters. ‘This is beautiful – look at it,’ he says, pointing at the vista behind him. ‘I’m certainly not saying, “Poor me”. We did try to find somewhere closer to home to film this show but there wasn’t anywhere else we could have made it, and it will look incredible on screen. But given the choice I would always choose to be home in the rain.

‘There isn’t a waking minute when I’m working abroad where I’m not thinking, “I wish I was there with them.” Or if it’s particularly beautiful, as it is here, I’m thinking, “This is great, but Mindy’s not here.”’

Not that Mindy expects him to moon over her. Quite the opposite, in fact. ‘She’s very good at telling me to enjoy it,’ he says. ‘When I was younger I’d have been sitting in my room on my day off emailing Mindy and missing her, but I’m 51 now and old enough to realise that’s silly, nobody wins from that. So I went kayaking on my day off last week. We’re working long hours most days, but when there’s the chance to kick back I do, and that’s certainly not a bad way to kick back.’

The Great Escapists is the first show produced by Richard’s own production company Chimp. When he and his Grand Tour co-stars Jeremy Clarkson and James May decided to focus on intermittent travel specials, each was offered the chance by Amazon to make solo projects instead.

James has already aired Our

Man In Japan and his cookery show for novices Oh Cook!, while Jeremy is putting the finishing touches to I Bought The Farm, about his 1,000-acre working farm in the Cotswolds. Those were both solo projects, but Richard has teamed up with the American presenter of longrunning science/experiment series Mythbusters, Tory Bellici, for The Great Escapists.

The show is a hybrid of drama, entertainment and popular science in which the two men pretend to be washed up on a desert island.

They then use their engineering skills to make machines and inventions to help them survive as they wait to be rescued.

Episode one opens with the pair being ‘interviewed’ by police about their time on the island, before they trace back to how they ended up there.

We see them arriving on the beach and then rifling through their shipwreck to find tools and materials they can use to build contraptions like a water-wheel to create power, as well as more luxurious appliances like a pizza oven.

‘First of all, if we were on a desert island we’d need food, shelter and water,’ says Richard. ‘We’re clever people so we solve that quite quickly, and then we decide to make a better life for ourselves while waiting to be rescued. So gradually we build a more luxurious place to live and equipment to catch fish or make some nice hooch, and along the way we talk about the science of what we’re doing because that’s what we’d do in real life.

‘Equally, if you’re not that into science, there’s a sub-plot that exists where Tory really wants to build something to get him rescued, whereas I’m rather enjoying turning my desert island into a kingdom and I’m happy to stay there. So we argue about that, and that’s a narrative arc that spans the six episodes.’

The Great Escapists was