Grand Tour Season 4: Not Really a Season at All
Fans of The Grand Tour – the spiritual successor to the insanely popular Top Gear of it’s first 17 or so season – have been waiting patiently for news of the new season. It’s coming soon, they say, but what is coming is not likely to make the fans all that happy.
For the first three seasons, The Grand Tour has been hosted in a large tent, with an audience and the three principals doing bits and cutting away to car reviews and “films” in which the trio get up to various silly adventures. For the first while the tent moved around place to place for each show, season 3 it stayed in Jeremy Clarksons’ back yard (essentially). But the audience, the test track, the conversation street… all things that were part of the show and almost directly lifted from the original Top Gear were all there.
Season 4, they said, forget about that. No more tent, no more audience, just plenty of great “films” with the trio doing what they do best. Sounds interesting, right?
Well, the other shoe dropped this week when it came out that Season 4 isn’t really a season at all. In fact, The Grand Tour Season 4 is just two longer shows, one around Christmas, and one around Easter… and that’s it. Two adventures, nothing much more. They say the shows are closer to double length, but just two? Seems like a lot to call it a season.
In some ways, I think that all three know they have been doing this stuff for a very long time. Even the long running gags perhaps won’t stand up to too many more visits to the well. Perhaps in slowing down the pace, they can keep the gig running longer in number of years, if not amount of content.
Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond are also moving on to other projects. Most recently, Clarkson announced he was doing a series about a farm of all things. Who knows, right? He’s also been hosting the UK Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and the others have similar side projects.
They have also been working on a site called Drive Tribe, which is suppose to be a hub for auto lovers. Sadly, it’s losing money by the pile, perhaps another indication to these guys that the car future doesn’t match up the car past.
