Clarkson, Hammond and May set to hang up spurs
After seven years on Amazon Prime, it looks like the Grand Tour has run its course (for now)
Barely a week after the BBC called time on Top Gear, it appears that the Amazon-backed spin-off that sought to mimic its format has also bitten the dust. Or at any rate, it won’t continue with its current presenters: the Sun reporting that Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have collectively decided that the episode they just finished filming in Zimbabwe will be their final outing. The BBC reckons that ‘options are being explored for a new incarnation of the show’ but that it will not continue with the three presenters that triggered its creation.
Asked to comment, Clarkson subsequently told The Times: "We’re done. I have reviewed cars on TV since 1989. That’s 34 years. And after next year, I won’t be doing that anymore.” The confirmation presumably brings the curtain down on a 20-year working relationship, May having joined Clarkson and Hammond on Top Gear back in 2003. According to an unnamed source quoted by the Sun, the decision marks the ‘end of an era’ but all three presenters “felt like the time was right and [they] wanted to go out on a high when the show remained popular.”
While it abandoned the studio format after the third season, the team returned to make a series of extravagant, often exotically located feature-length ‘specials’ that recalled previous Top Gear films of similar style and outlook. Most recently, this included the rally-inspired ‘A Scandi Flick’ and ‘Eurocrash’, a road trip across Central Europe in ‘strange cars that nobody buys’. It is understood that two additional episodes - one filmed in Mauritania, the other just completed in Zimbabwe - will draw the fifth season to a close next year.
Certainly, the presenters have no shortage of other work to devote their time to, some of it - most notably Clarkson’s Farm, which is due to return for a third season - also produced by Amazon. Nevertheless, the Grand Tour’s apparent conclusion, coming so close to confirmation of Top Gear’s (probably lengthy) hiatus is lamentable for anyone who enjoyed the spectacle of big-budget, car-themed TV - which, let’s face it, was most of us at some point in the last two decades. And while it’s probably true that the format itself needs rethinking, we can only hope that whatever comes next lives up to the unlikely legacy of three middle-aged blokes cocking about in cars.
On the other hand, the entire point of The Grand Tour was to be a vehicle for putting them together with some vehicles. The show without them would be as pointless as trying to keep The Who going once Pete and Roger finally tap out.
I would much rather watch Clarkson farming, Hammond restoring cars & May being affable & nerdy about eclectic subjects individually than flogging the same horse, which while still having some life in it will eventually die.
Good luck to them & thank you.
I like the farm show but am not interested in farming at all. I’ve tried May’s A Man in shows they’re ok. I like him though. Not too bothered about Hammond without the other two though…. Will miss this and the woke-free environment is a breath of fresh air.
I enjoy Clarkson's Farm, but can’t get through an episode of May or Hammond, they don’t have the charisma Clarkson has. That being said I did enjoy the toy episodes May did years ago.
I’m not sad it’s ended it’s run its course.
Now the Daily Mail is saying the trio are returning to the Beeb to host Top Gear.
The Grand Tour has just been a biannual release of a road trip over the past few years and has lost some of its magic. The chemistry is still there but you can only do so much with a format and they've all got other projects keeping them busy (Clarkson's farm, drivetribe, Hammond's Cog, May's travel and food shows etc).
Much like Top Gear it has had its day now, the last specials have been dire.
The GT specials have, for me at least, become less enjoyable as time has gone on. The genuinely funny bits seem to be getting replaced by "look, here's something obviously stupid and/or staged - here comes the big laugh moment".
That's not too say that parts of the recent episodes haven't raised a dry smile. It's just that the scripted humour that previously felt naturally delivered has been replaced by "Step 1: Set up implausibly risky situation, Step 2: Do obviously silly thing, Step 3: Fall about laughing".
This stuff was always there (like the 4x4 'accidentally' rolling down the hill in South America), but those moments never felt like the centrepiece of the episode in the way that they have in recent times.
May sitting on the motorway at 40mph in Poland and Clarkson pushing Hammond's shed down the slopes feel like examples where the scriptwriters just ran out of energy for integrating the humour into the episode in a way they previously did.
It feels like the right time.
Like the recently re-booted tv show Big Brother which tanked, the world has moved on. Not to take anything away from these 3 though, they can be proud of the glory years when we all looked forward to Sunday night
Like the recently re-booted tv show Big Brother which tanked, the world has moved on. Not to take anything away from these 3 though, they can be proud of the glory years when we all looked forward to Sunday night
Like the recently re-booted tv show Big Brother which tanked, the world has moved on. Not to take anything away from these 3 though, they can be proud of the glory years when we all looked forward to Sunday night
That said they were getting a bit long in the tooth and trying too hard at the end.
Clarksons Farm is so so for me, May has the odd interesting episode and Hammond is a bit of a turn off with his whining.
One thing I miss are the great road trip type events and for that I've turned to a lot of American YouTube channels such as Gears and Gasoline, Tavarish/Hoovie/VinWiki/CarTrek etc. Harry does a few nice road trips. Some of the American ones where they buy a wreck and drive it 1,500 miles home are good.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff