The Grand Tour
The wait is over.
The three musketeers of the motoring world are back and in a big big way! It feels like a lifetime since we have seen Clarkson, Hammond and May on our screens, since their dramatic departure from the BBC 18 Months ago (By sheer luck Clarkson hasn’t technically been fired from the BBC, which is made note of in the 10min introduction to the show) by boy was it worth it!
The show starts off with Clarkson leaving an office building in London in dark gloomy rain and handing a security guard an ID badge (metaphor for the BBC?) with radio clippings of a person leaving a show layered underneath. We are then presented with Clarkson getting a plane and traveling over to a colourful and vibrant LA and it is here where Clarkson looks happier and free from the doom and gloom, a metaphor for the shackles of the BBC? The Grand Tour is on the internet and you can get away with a lot more on the internet and his controversial phrases won’t harm his employers as evidently as he would if he was still on the BBC. Again this is made note of within the first 10mins and he makes a joke about tents and gypsies.
Small jabs to the BBC and Top Gear are found throughout the show, such as The American, Conversation Corner and ‘Your Name Here Corner’ one can only assume that ‘Your Name Here Corner’ is a nod to ‘Gambon’ on the Top Gear’s track. But besides all of the sly digs toward their former employers the show is essentially Top Gear but with a lot more money thrown at it $13.3M approximately per episode ($160M for 12 Episodes) and it is shown throughout the show just where that money is going. Just in the first 10 minutes alone the hordes of cars driving through the desert would have cost a lot of money!
If you liked Top Gear with the three friends mucking around, you’ll love The Grand Tour It is essentially their old show in a fancy new packaging. If you didn’t like them before you probably won’t like them now. If you’re a new customer to The Grand Tour and Clarkson, Hammond and May, they’re like marmite and the show isn’t as much a motoring show but more of an entertainment show. So don’t expect to see intricate reviews of cars, but more of three guys having fun with cars. From what I have seen we’re in for a ride over the next 12 weeks and I cannot wait.
To watch The Grand Tour click here!
To listen to the guys talking about The Grand Tour please click here!
