A couple weeks ago I finished watching the first season of the Grand Tour on Amazon Prime. Since I actually pay for a membership, I wasn’t one of the millions of people who made it the most illegally downloaded show of all time. But that statistic in itself speaks to the role of car television and how many petrolheads out there clamoring for a chance to see three old men finding new ways to make fun of one another in cars that keep breaking down.
Unlike many people, I also watched the entire season of Top Gear, suffering through a shouty host in Chris Evans who I still believe is a true car guy through and through, but was undoubtedly the wrong person for the job. But what we knew after a few episodes, Top Gear knew too, and Evans’ role was diminished throughout the series, which ended with his departure by mutual consent.
Now that we’re through the freshman years of two shows that, for all intents and purposes, are brand new, we can rightfully say that there were some serious duds, for both shows, but that there’s so much promise in what’s to come, we could be heading for a really special time in automotive television.
When Top Gear started back up, we sort of knew what we were in store for - a lot of the same segments that had worked for more than a decade, but with different people running them and different personalities at work. What we ended up with was a really mixed bag. Some of the segments were fun and featured a different take on the types of gags that worked with Jeremy, Richard and James, but the two main hosts, Chris and Matt, never really seemed to click, and there, for me at least, was always a sort of tension that I sensed between the two of them which undercut the comedy. I’ve never been a huge fan of the celebrity guest segment, but at least Jeremy treated guests like real people. In the interviewer role, Evans looked more like he was filling in a form, asking the same questions each week and nobody really looked like they were having fun, especially when Jesse Eisenberg was around. The rallycross track was an interesting twist, but conditions created such a disparity in performance that the lap times were never bound to be comparable, and the segment took up time that could have been devoted to other stories or features.
The production quality though, was as high as ever, offering a truly cinematic quality that is hard to equal, the access to nearly intangible cars continued and some features, like the Ultimate SUV test and Classic Cars with Modern Tech were a lot of fun. If you treat the first series without the holy trinity as an extended audition for permanent roles, it instantly becomes more palatable. And we’ve seen in the trailer for the next series that LeBlanc, who was one of the best parts of last series, will be joined by Chris Harris and Rory Reid in a return to a traditional three host assembly, which I think will return the show to a lot of its former glory and provide more fun for both the participants and viewers. I think we’re going to finally get a new Top Gear that establishes itself as a powerful force in automotive television in its own right.
The Grand Tour too stumbled several times throughout its first season. It’s no secret that the three are Monty Python fans, but Celebrity Brain Crash will never be the next Spanish Inquisition, partially because everyone expects it, but mostly because it was tired and unfunny after the second episode. Conversation Street was a clunky way to include some different twists on an old visual technique, but it provided more intrusion than humor. I don’t know why they couldn’t just continue talking. Part of the reason millions of viewers are attached to Jeremy, Richard and James is because of their seemingly unscripted interactions, and much of this season seemed far too heavily scripted, and the line reading was distracting and sometimes predictable.
Visually, only W. Chump and Sons rivals Top Gear for production quality, which shined even when the segments didn’t, like the desert military sequence that was largely car-absent. These guys don’t just know how to do car films, they know how to make film films, which creates a compelling viewing experience, even when some other aspects of the show fail. I’ve always loved the cheap car challenges with these three and they never failed to amuse in this new venue. The individual car tests were also excellent, the writing of the three hosts really allowed to shine, without the pressure of needing unscripted, organic interactions with each other. Where the challenges provide a venue for comedy, the reviews offer a chance to tell a story, and each of the hosts did well here.
The tent provided a neat new stage for the hosts, and the fact that they were in different cities almost each week provided an ice breaker, but only some of the times the jokes landed. I think the show missed an opportunity to use the touring tent idea as part of a longer, ongoing challenge, sort of like a 10-part film that continued between the cities that hosted the show. It would have been a logistical nightmare, but Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman did something similar in Long Way Round and Long Way Down, but without the tent. It would have given the show a distinctly different feel from Top Gear, but what we ended up with is a similar show, handcuffed by legal restrictions on what they can and can’t do. It’s still a great show, and I’m hoping to see more innovation from the team to really break away from the familiar formula, but not in a way that winds up like Episode 2.
With the next series of Top Gear set to debut this Sunday, I think we could be setting off on a real golden age of automotive television. The trailers have all been very promising and I can't wait to see what the three guys (both sets of them) have in store for us next.