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One of the most acute mistakes Clarkson’s iteration of Top Gear increasingly made was its blurring of the line between presenter and actor. No one at Amazon is saying “yes, but will it be entertaining?”
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In a pastiche of Tom Cruise sci-fi blow-em-up Edge of Tomorrow, the trio pretended to die only to be respawned, embarked on a car chase, caused some explosions, and Jeremy was shot in the nethers. Then came the second episode, and everything started to unravel. Its 80-minute runtime whizzed by on goodwill and these nuggets of novelty. The opening episode also introduced its various “new” segments, like Conversation Street, its new track and attendant tame racing driver. Somehow you were on Clarkson’s side, despite the BBC only doing what any company would have if one of its employees had punched a producer in the face.
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Its opening sequence – in which Jeremy went from a murky London to heading a Mad Max-style phalanx of supercars in California – had the pleasingly petulant sense of a show flashing the BBC a backwards finger “L” on its forehead, saying “ look at all the money we’ve got”. It must be said, though, the first episode did border on joyous. The kernel of what made Top Gear a phenomenon – three men bickering, driving around and being rubbish – is almost entirely absent. Worse, with the pool of cash Amazon provides, it’s cranked up these irksome indulgences to the point where bolts are popping out. And this is because, as well as transplanting the presenting team (plus executive producer Andy Wilman) across from Top Gear, it has also carried across the baggage that made latter-day Top Gear fall flat. Only, four episodes in, it doesn’t feel like an exciting new start.
#Top gear the grand tour plus
It got a vast pool of potential fans to cough up for Prime those same fans still got their Top Gear, plus the tantalising possibility of goods delivered the same day and the presenters, without the BBC’s finger for ever wagging in their direction, might finally get to make the show they always wanted to. A bidding war was inevitable and, even at a reported $160m, Amazon’s purchase seemed like a good deal for everyone. At its demise, Top Gear still had worldwide viewing figures in the region of 350 million, making it the most-viewed factual (add your own air-quotes) programme in the world. Nevertheless, when Clarkson, Hammond and May found themselves cast off, the acquisition of their services seemed like the surest deal a rival service could possibly make. Glimmers of the trio’s off-the-cuff banter were there, but you had to squint to see them.
#Top gear the grand tour series
Its final series wasn’t bereft of fun segments (Hammond being dropped into the British Columbian wilderness was one highlight), but even these were blighted with the issues that had long outweighed its initial knockabout charm: bloated scenes of forced scripted comedy, an over-reliance on Hollywood visuals, and carefully plotted structured-reality taking the place of anything really happening. W hen Top Gear’s Clarkson era spluttered to a steak-related end last year, even its staunchest fans – and, as the petitions to reinstate Clarkson proved, it still had a vast number of those – must have grudgingly accepted that the motorcade of man-child mayhem was past its prime.