Jeremy Clarkson’s hotly anticipated new motoring show has a release date. The Grand Tour will bring together the three original BBC Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May in a new Amazon show that follows a similar formula. Ever since Amazon announced that they’d be funding the spiritual successor to Top Gear , fans of Jeremy Clarkson have been awaiting a release date for the new series. The Grand Tour has now been confirmed to be airing this November.
According to Digital Spy , the official launch date for The Grand Tour is November 18. Following that initial launch, new episodes of the motoring show will be released every Friday for 12 weeks, exclusively available to stream through Amazon’s Prime Video service. Vice President of Amazon Prime Video EU Jay Marine confirmed the news, saying “Customers have been desperate to find out when they can watch their favourite team back on screen, so we are very excited to announce the launch date of one of the most globally anticipated shows of 2016”.
Amazon’s ‘The Grand Tour’ car show launches November 18th https://t.co/krXt28NcWY pic.twitter.com/JzLklDjg2w
— Engadget UK (@EngadgetUK) September 16, 2016
Amazon didn’t just provide an air date for the new series, they also released a new trailer. The flashy new trailer provides a glimpse of what’s to come for The Grand Tour over the next few months, building considerably upon previously released short snippets of footage, as the trio are out on the race track for the launch of the new series.
According to the Mirror , the first ever episode of the new season will take place in California , where their tent will be set-up for the week. However, the location of that tent will move with each episode, as Clarkson, Hammond, and May travel across the globe to film their new show. That’s largely helped by the amount of funding that Amazon has pumped into The Grand Tour , giving producer Andy Wilman much more flexibility than he previously had when producing Top Gear for the BBC.
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Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May all grew to prominence through hosting the BBC motoring show Top Gear between 2003 and 2015. However, last year, an incident between Jeremy Clarkson and a member of the production team saw the BBC choose not to renew Clarkson’s contract. Shortly following that announcement, both Richard Hammond and James May, alongside producer Andy Wilman, confirmed that they would be leaving the BBC show alongside Clarkson.
The BBC show was revived earlier this year with Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc hosting, whilst Amazon confirmed that they’d signed the original hosting trio and producer Andy Wilman for a new series that would span three seasons. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos described the deal as being “very, very, very expensive”.
Top Gear: Chris Evans and Matt LeBlanc seem quite surprised to hear they’re not friends… https://t.co/yiHTuPgi6L pic.twitter.com/bDUHywNROF
— Digital Spy (@digitalspy) April 13, 2016
As aforementioned, the trio is set to shoot the first episode of the new season in Southern California later this month. However, their tent has already been spotted in Johannesburg, South Africa, where one of the show’s episodes is expected to be set. At the same time, production staff have confirmed filming will take place in a number of different locations across the globe, including Germany and the trio’s homeland, the United Kingdom. All filming is expected to be completed by December 2016.
Whilst the new series has been heralded as the spiritual successor to Top Gear , BBC lawyers are believed to have warned Amazon against using similar segments to their show. With that in mind, viewers of The Grand Tour should expect a largely new show from the original Top Gear trio.
[Featured Image by Amazon Prime]