The Grand Tour will soon hit Amazon Prime and the show’s executive producer, Andy Wilman, has elaborated on what to expect.
Wilman – who helped reinvent Top Gear with the help of Jeremy Clarkson – gave Edinburgh TV Festival-goers a preview of what to expect in a short video and, unsurprisingly, the Top Gear recipe is very much on the menu. Minus the Stig, of course.
James May managed to break his arm when stumbling out of a pub so is having to film his part of the show in pain. One section of the show sees May and Richard Hammond shooting at Clarkson in a flak jacket, who later wakes up to find his car has been airlifted.
Wilman described the incident: “[May] fell over on the night before filming, coming out of a pub. He rang me up and said ‘I’ve broken my arm’. His car was automatic so we stuck him on Eurostar, pumped him full of drugs and left him to it.
“He did more damage to it because he had to keep on going but he’s falling to bits anyway. We are not in Usain Bolt territory with that body.”
The video also showed a scene with the trio putting Maseratis, a Rolls-Royce and a Porsche through their paces and Clarkson riding a jetski.
On The Grand Tour teaser, Wilman added: “This is not a trailer but I put something together to show we have been busy. We have been going around the world with big ambition in the films.”
Wilman also discussed the idea of the tent, which turns out was Clarkson’s, and that he was against it. “He saw True Detectives where there is a Baptist meeting in a tent. He’s unemployed, he watches a lot of box sets. He said: ‘We will move it around, we will be rootless’.”
Clarkson has since said the logistics of it “do his f***ing head in” but admitted, “it looks better than us, it’s quite classy”. It can house 300 people and is black with the show’s logo on the roof.
As for overlap with Top Gear, there is a leaderboard but it can’t be handwritten. Then there’s the news section, which has to be called something else, presumably to keep the Beeb off Amazon’s back.
Wilman confirmed there will be 12 episodes per year for three years, as previously reported.
“Like them or loathe them, they are still doing their thing,” Wilman said of the ex-Top Gear trio. Good news, then, if the new Top Gear wasn’t quite cutting it. The Grand Tour is set to land on Amazon in the autumn of 2016.
Update: The Grand Tour will launch on the 18th of November, 2016. Watch the trailer here.
Update two: There is an even newer trailer that shows the show in some of its glory, keep on scrolling.
Update three: For more info check out – The Grand Tour: Everything you need to know.
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