Amazon’s ‘Grand Tour’ shifts gears
There’ll be more road tripping, less talking.
Friday’s return of “The Grand Tour” marked the beginning of the end for at least one part of Amazon Prime’s car show.
They’ll toss the tent after this season – and that’s not a bad thing.
Season 3 is the last in which Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will sit and talk about cars during the weekly episodes. Amazon renewed the show for a fourth season last month – before the third was released – but said future seasons will feature only road trips.
So no more celebrity segments, awkward interactions with a studio audience or talking about the latest news from the car industry.
“Season 4 will see the guys ditch the tent to take on big adventure road trips that we know Prime members love,” the streaming service explained on Twitter.
In other words, if you like watching the trio behind their table or seeing celebrities driving around a test track, enjoy it this season because it won’t last.
This is a good move for the trio, formerly seen on BBC’s “Top Gear,” who is at its best mixing it up on the road.
And it’s good for Amazon Prime as well, which counts the car show as a jewel in its original programming lineup.
What are fans going to miss about the tent? Not much. The first season of “The Grand Tour” saw the demise of a celebrity guest each week as part of a running joke that got old by the third episode, which isn’t a good sign for a 13-episode season.
It didn’t help that that Clarkson, Hammond and May seemed to feel the same way as the season went on. The concept never made it past that first season, but the desire to have a celebrity aspect to the show didn’t disappear.
Celebrities were a big part of sit- downs in the tent: The series even had a Celebrity Face Off in Season 2, pairing stars to compete on a road course. But those were a bit of a bust.
If the pairing was a bad match, the segment became boring really quickly. And watching British cricketers and Welsh actors compete against American celebrities such as David Hasselhoff, Stewart Copeland of The Police and former MLB relief pitcher Brian Wilson just wasn’t appealing.
The Season 3 premiere, streaming now, has no celebrity segment, and when Clarkson asks the audience if they would rather see celebrities instead of a drag race between two American muscle cars, there’s dead silence.
Even “Conversation Street,” a segment in which Clarkson, Hammond and May sit around a table talking about car news, can drag.
Still, the segment hit the right notes when the three car enthusiasts found something they were excited about.
The real highlights have come when the three car lovers got out of the studio and into the streets: There were challenges in the Namib Desert and Mozambique. There were American trips with stops in Manhattan and the Colorado Rockies.
The Season 3 premiere finds Clarkson, Hammond and May pushing the limits of American muscle cars through the streets of Detroit, and next week’s episode follows the hosts on a trip to Colombia. Amazon’s trailer for this season’s run of episodes teases trips to sandy desserts and snow tracks.
This season will be the end of an era of sorts.
Segments that the trio adapted from their years on “Top Gear” will fade away. As these pieces go away, most of us won’t shed any tears. We watch because of the hosts, who have become celebrities in their own right
So it’s OK. Change is good. After all, one of the best things about driving a car is the road trips with sarcastic British friends through the jungles of Colombia – or at least watching someone else do it on Amazon’s dime.