‘One for the Road’: Amazon’s ‘Grand Tour’ Drives Off into the Sunset

At this point, The Grand Tour‘s followers on Amazon Prime Video are fairly well-versed in the line ‘ episode. Leading Gear, a conservative program originally aired on the BBC in 1977 and ran until 2001, was a standout program discussing shoe space and fuel economy among European cars. Tory racing journalist Jeremy Clarkson rose to the top of the show in the 1990s, when he was then known for his a million miles of car-related, utterly un-PC hyperbole, before leaving for solo projects in 1999. In the 1990s, he was sporting the most tremendous chin head of trimmed hair of any man ever worn. Major Gear, suffering declining scores in his presence, was cancelled by the Beeb two years later.

Clarkson and maker Andy Wilman created a new style that resembled the initial show in terms of about postmodernity while it was off-air. In came wild and unbelievably costly European hypercars like the Bugatti Veyron, the Pagani Zonda, and the Ferrari Enzo. With one foot on the car of their vehicle, bored car journalists appeared in earnest and gave consumer advice while standing in silence. In went three visitors who yelled, argued, and botched each other like they were infested high school kids as they attempted to create absurd Rube Goldberg car-related tasks like turning the three-wheeled Reliant Robin into a Space Shuttle, a Jaguar XJS cabriolet into a rail train, and a trailer truck into a balloon. A light racing jumpsuit-clad, private race car driver who never spoke or removed his helmet was also present and who accompanied those Euro-hypercars around the show’s lasting racetrack like a monster.

Creating the auto show parallel of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, this type of Major Gear&nbsp, debuted in 2002, and became one of the most frequently viewed shows on the planet until Clarkson, under enormous stress in his personal and professional life, got drunk in 2014 and punched a supplier. A furious BBC made the decision to not renew Clarkson’s agreement, and the enraged cast and crew made the decision to leave with him in the more profitable universe of streaming video. As Clarkson himself recently wrote in the London Times,” I’d approach the TV show on Monday, publish it on Tuesday, archive it on Wednesday and then be on level on Thursday night in Johannesburg. Or Oslo. Or Budapest. I was fired because I became feverish, possessed, and insane. Next Amazon spotted that every participant in the biggest show in the world was immediately available. So we called the Hothouse Flowers, created the biggest, most extravagant show beginning that we could manage, and did so with the support of Amazon, and then started all over again.

In terms of Amazon’s money, Wilman just acknowledged that while they initially considered moving from the BBC to a foe American TV channel, they needed money from the US and looked into the several streaming services like Netflix and Apple. The conversation, particularly the one about money, was then” Amazon got in touch with us, and we started talking.” It was like,’ Make the show as legally close to Top Gear as possible’. No bones about it.’ We want an up-and-ready show to go around the world]that ] we ai n’t going to get sued for, and you four are in. ‘” &nbsp,

The Grand Tour, the successor show to Top Gear that Clarkson and his cohosts, Richard Hammond and James May created, along with Wilman and former Top Gear&nbsp, script editor Richard Porter, was wildly uneven when compared to its beloved predecessor. However, its three stars ‘ chemistry made it generally watchable, especially the segments that were shot outside of the studio for road tests and comedies car kitbashing, which retained the chemistry of their original BBC series.

When Amazon released The Grand Tour, British tabloids were speculating a lot about Jeff Bezos paying a sizable sum for it. If accurate, this would be the same sum he paid to buy another long-running institution that was actually living off of its former reputation, the Washington Post. According to Porter, the three presenters intended to spend three seasons together before calling it a day, but Amazon requested additional seasons. The trio and Wilman agreed, but only if they could leave their studio audience and concentrate on what they had dubbed their” specials”: beautifully filmed and meticulously edited travelogues that featured the largely improvised car-related hijinks in exotic lands. So we removed the tent that had recently become our new home, according to Clarkson, and instead focused on what we really enjoyed doing best: collecting three terrible old cars and checking if we could take them over gruesome terrain to a ridiculous location.

The Grand Tour is Grounded

And then 2020 happened. Due to this, it was virtually impossible to travel on the scale required to stage a show with 4k visuals from The Grand Tour. The crew of the two episodes the show produced at the height of lockdown in England were shot in what James May referred to as a” Covid bubble,” with loads of masks and frequent Covid tests for everyone involved. They started the filming in Scotland, before not even leaving England, focusing on the numerous eccentricities of French cars. These two episodes, according to Wilman, are the equivalent of rock band playing an” Unplugged” concert on MTV. They were essentially the boys who hosted a vintage Top Gear episode from 15 years ago, according to many viewers. Not the most breathtaking locales, but plenty of mindless fun nonetheless.

Beyond Covid, there are currently numerous international conflicts that make traveling dangerous for a large portion of the world. The Grand Tour‘s” Scandi Flick” special from 2022 was originally conceived as being filmed in Russia. Then Putin rolled the tanks into Ukraine. Or as Clarkson explained in at the beginning of last year’s” Eurocrash” episode,” If you think about all the places we’ve been to in recent years, places that were stable when we were there, that are n’t anymore. Mozambique. Syria. Iraq. Burma. Ukraine. Russia. We could n’t go back to any of them. Or, for different reasons, Argentina”.

Due to his feud with a Top Gear producer first, and then BBC management, Clarkson and the crew left Amazon. He made a Game of Thrones metaphorical claim in a column for the Sun in late 2022, and demanded that Meghan Markle be paraded “naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant,” Shame!”. and smack her with lumps of sand. Apparently, much groveling with Amazon was done by the veteran TV host and journalist to keep his popular Clarkson’s Farm&nbsp, TV series. Beyond Clarkson’s admission that” after 36 years of talking about cars on television, I’m packing it in, because I’m too old and fat to get into the cars I like and not interested in driving those I do n’t, there’s no denying that.”

Riding Off into the Sunset

Which brings us to” One for the Road”, which as the title implies, is the last show. As Clarkson told Daily Mirror, Andy Wilman’s brief for the last episode was” Leave the dynamite at home”. With less things exploding, it’s a wistful look back at the old Top Gear specials, with the boys in three vintage cars driving through first the stunning scenery of Zimbabwe, which Top Gear could n’t film in because the BBC was prohibited there, and then Botswana, where the Top Gear specials all started. Along the way, there are callbacks to other elements of the specials, such as the comedy backup car, boating, the A-Team theme song when it’s time modify the cars, etc. until the final credits are over, and a moving look back at the locations and Botswana vehicles. &nbsp,

As Benji Wilson writes in the London Telegraph, giving the last episode four out of five stars,” slowly, tearfully, TV’s three amigos park up for good:”

Clarkson, of course, has Amazon’s biggest hit Clarkson’s Farm to return to. He plainly could n’t give two hoots, and a less prickly Jezza is much better company than usual. There is a sense of going through the motions every now and then as they drive off and leave a flailing Hammond to contend with his decrepit Mark One Capri in tow. However, it’s been felt like that for almost ten years now, since they abandoned real-world motoring journalism in favor of” The Three Stooges on four wheels ad infinitum.”

If you do n’t like that act, you most likely would n’t be tuning into The Grand Tour for its last lap anyway. Still, there is a likeable, even moving quality to this send-off. In an early diatribe, Clarkson points out that cars are n’t as interesting as they once were: electric vehicles are essentially brand-new white goods. Reviews and views are largely conducted online. The trio was the ingenious creator of the phrase” Is it just me”? Contrarian, but keyboard warriors and social media lords have now assumed that position.

In short, things have moved on. The fact that Clarkson and co are resolutely unbothered is what makes One for the Road so enjoyable. They drive themselves to Zimbabwe for a nice drive. They pick cars they like, because, well, they like them. They have always been traveling with some of the best camera crews in the industry, and the setting for their wanderings is stunning. No dials are moved, no envelopes maxed. But slowly, quietly and with surprisingly little shouting, a TV era is over.

So with the last Grand Tour complete, what can we say about the show? Looking back at 15 years or so of streaming television, what South Park called” Memberberries” clearly dominates all of the major platforms. Beyond the endless assortment of old movies and TV series that is the core library of each streaming platform, Disney + has its myriad of ( for the most part ) mediocre Star Wars-themed series, and Beatles-related titles. Paramount + has its myriad of ( for the most part ) mediocre&nbsp, Star Trek-themed series. In 2019, Netflix released The Irishman, which was a glacially slow callback by Martin Scorsese to his much better earlier gangster movies, and in 2018, acquired the rights to Monty Python’s Flying Circus in all its various incarnations. Earlier this year, Apple TV released Masters of the Air, &nbsp, which is the sequel to the earlier WWII-themed series, Band of Brothers&nbsp, and&nbsp, The Pacific. And of course, there are endless amounts of old TV shows and movies on all major platforms. While streaming is still the cutting-edge format to watch television, nostalgia dominates it at every turn.

However, while the Grand Tour was undoubtedly meant to be” as closely as possible as possible,” as Wilman above stated, it also served as a representation of Top Gear as the creators of the series intended it to be, not as a platform to grind the stars down for their unwary views, as so many Star Wars and Star Trek spinoffs were intended to be. Given its location on a streaming platform rather than a terrestrial TV channel, the show could never capture the enormous viewership of the original series, and the benefits of that enormous viewership, such as the Top Gear&nbsp, Live&nbsp, show that played European sports stadiums. ( Clarkson once referred to the Grand Tour as” Top Gear&nbsp, in witness protection”. )

Also, the car itself is now under constant attack by the enviro-mental left, something Clarkson notes in the last episode. The BBC has cancelled or temporarily rested its own successor version of Top Gear, at least for the moment. The last Grand Tour is now available for streaming. With the exception of Richard Hammond’s Workshop, &nbsp, his car restoration-themed series on the British Discovery Channel, and&nbsp, vague talk about rebooting the Grand Tour with younger hosts, there are currently no car-themed TV series being made for British terrestrial TV, and in America, even Jay Leno’s Garage is now on YouTube, not CNBC. The action has moved to YouTube, where the much smaller budgets allow for nothing less than the stunning cinematography of the Grand Tour and its incredible production values.

In the interim, however, as Car and Driver concludes, there is “one last ride for glory across beautiful scenery in the wild places of the world, in 50-year-old cars that were n’t even particularly reliable when new, in addition to the countless hours of their previous shows. Watch Clarkson and Hammond aggravate May’s phlegm once more. One last conversation with three friends who were undoubtedly relieved to be contributing something extraordinarily special and lasting.

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