Back in 2002, when the BBC launched a reboot of its motoring show, Top Gear, producers had to scour the side alleys of TV to find its presenting trio. Jeremy Clarkson, who co-devised the format, was best known for presenting Robot Wars. Richard Hammond appeared on the dodgy-sounding satellite channel, Men & Motors. And James May, who joined in the second series, had been languishing on Channel 4, co-hosting their rival show, Driven. The casting proved inspired, but times have changed. It’s perhaps no surprise then, that Amazon’s reboot of The Grand Tour – the last great vehicle for Clarkson, Hammond and May – has plucked its stars from that new gold mine: social media.
They are James Engelsman and Thomas Holland – really? Another famous Thomas Holland(er)? – the YouTubers behind Throttle House, a leading channel for petrolheads, and Francis Bourgeois, a trainspotting TikToker who exploded into prominence during the pandemic. Together, the trio will travel the world, embarking on car-fuelled adventures and hoping that some of that old chemistry rubs off. “Have fun with this,” Clarkson advises, as the new trio arrive at Diddly Squat Farm for some convenient cross-promotion, “and don’t f*** it up!” Their first trip takes them to California, to the “dwindling world of petrol sports cars”, where they each get behind the wheel of a brand-new muscle car that’s defying the onslaught of electric vehicles. There’s a Ford Mustang, an American classic with an eye-watering price tag; a sleek Corvette that can ease up to 150 mph; and, finally, the Hennessey Venom, a roadster with horsepower that could turn Shadowfax grey. “With acceleration like this, I feel like I’m flying a fighter jet,” Bourgeois observes, as he roars off in the Venom.
When Amazon snaffled up the Top Gear presenters and launched The Grand Tour, they took a beloved part of the BBC show – the foreign specials – and made that the focus of the series. With carte blanche, the stunts could be bigger than ever. But they were also glossier, less prone to the haphazard disasters of the original. And this new iteration of The Grand Tour feels even less chaotic. They cruise serenely through Bombay Beach, rope Jenson Button in for a performance test at the Thermal Country Club, and participate in a slickly choreographed relay race with a team of aerobatic jets. “I felt the need,” Engelsman observes as his Corvette streaks off, “the need for the toilet.”
It is all rather safe. Engelsman and Holland clearly know each other well (the latter, a Canadian, is the most polished on-screen performer), but most of the charisma is left to Bourgeois. He might be an acquired taste (his enthusiasm for trains is either charming or irritating, depending on your cynicism levels), yet he clearly offers something distinctive. He has the nerdy qualities of James May coupled with Richard Hammond’s most effusive moments of childlike wonder. During one sequence where the team drives alongside a freight train, hauling its load through the Californian desert, his face lights up with a level of delight I have never, personally, experienced. “We’re in a Francis Bourgeois dream right now,” one of his co-hosts observes. It does slightly raise the question of whether Bourgeois might be more invested in the whole endeavour if they ditched the cars and travelled by train.
But for the most part, the opening episode of this relaunch is fine. The dynamic between the new presenters has yet to settle but will develop over time. Top Gear and The Grand Tour are shows that required their hosts to make tightly scripted, carefully planned sequences look spontaneous and effortless. That ease has yet to come; at times the new hosts come across as stilted. And it is not quite clear what the show wants to be. On the one hand, the season opener is a rallying cry for the fossil fuel industry (“petrol powered performance isn’t going to be driven out of town any time soon,” they declare, proudly). At the same time, there are a few jokes that might test the patience of their proprietor, Mr Bezos. “What part of the American dream does your car represent?” Holland asks Bourgeois, staring at his gaudy £2.1m ride. “The new American dream,” Bourgeois deadpans back. “Being a billionaire.”
Will audiences who loved the original trio be converted by this new gang? Will their social media followings translate to Prime subscriptions? These are questions that the top bods at Amazon will be stressing about. “This is not an easy job,” Holland observes at the end of his first episode. He’s right. As the BBC have found in their attempts to recast Top Gear, the stakes are high. With this new generation of The Grand Tour, Amazon has played it as safe as possible – which, for some viewers, might undermine the whole point of a motoring adventure show.