We’ve known for a little while now that Amazon Prime Video’s “The Grand Tour” was coming to an end. Not only are Clarkson, Hammond and May much older than they were when they first began filming “Top Gear” together more than 20 years ago, but there’s also that time Clarkson wrote that absolutely vile column for The Sun that led Amazon to announce plans to part ways with him. Still, Prime Video allowed him to stay on to film a few more “Grand Tour” specials, and the trailer for the first one was only just released.
Called “The Grand Tour: Sand Job,” the latest special appears to have the trio driving an Aston Martin DB9, a Jaguar F-Type, and a Maserati GranTurismo, through Northwest Africa. There’s also a very long train, some sort of floating van, two boat conversions, two snow machines, shots of the three driving their cars on the beach and plenty of shenanigans. It appears to have everything you’d expect from a “Grand Tour” special but doesn’t exactly give you much of a reason to watch.
Now, it’s entirely possible that the special itself will be much better than the trailer makes it appear. Some other team was probably in charge of editing the trailer, and they could have just done a bad job of choosing what to highlight. Based on what we can see, though, the inspiration is just completely gone. Everything they showed in the trailer is something we’ve seen multiple times before in some form or another. If someone claimed the script was written by AI, we’d believe it. It just doesn’t look particularly entertaining or even interesting.
Unfortunately for all of us, when “The Grand Tour: Sand Job” premieres on February 16, it won’t be the final “Grand Tour” special. That distinction is saved for one that was filmed in Zimbabwe and is reportedly airing later this year.