"New episodes will be released weekly on Amazon Prime Video, every Friday beginning November 18 (in 4K), exclusively for Prime members.

Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are back with The Grand Tour. A show about adventure, excitement and friendship... as long as you accept that the people you call friends are also the ones you find extremely annoying. Sometimes it's even a show about cars. Follow them on their global adventure."

Just over one week away from the new show, I guess it's time for a new thread. Still not happy about this being on Amazon though. Interface still sucks on every platform I've used.

Lengthy interview over at Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-gr...-gamble-516725

"Exclusive: Under the Hood of 'The Grand Tour' and Amazon's £160 Million Gamble on Jeremy Clarkson
By Tufayel Ahmed On 11/4/16 at 10:39 AM

“The stakes are lower. I’m now 56, it doesn’t really matter anymore, because I’ll be dead soon,” Jeremy Clarkson says. The former Top Gear host is telling Newsweek about whether he feels pressure for his new car show, The Grand Tour —launching on Amazon Prime Video November 18—to be a hit. After all, the spiritual successor to his old series Top Gear is said to have cost the online retailer £160 million for three seasons. “People could say, ‘This is a terrible program and Amazon’s wasted its money,’ and I’ll go, ‘Yeah, I’ll be dead before they even notice,’” Clarkson says.

Even if Clarkson is blasé about how the new show is received by critics and the millions of viewers who once watched him, Richard Hammond and James May on Top Gear , Amazon won’t be. For them, betting on Clarkson and his two co-hosts is a high-stakes gamble. A factual program like The Grand Tour doesn’t naturally fall into its wheelhouse—the web giant is better known for the award-winning dramedy Transparent . But Amazon is feeling confident the gamble will pay off because of the familiarity of the show’s stars and format. At one point, Clarkson, Hammond and May’s iteration of Top Gear made the Guinness World Records as the most watched factual program in the world, airing in 212 territories to an estimated global audience of 350 million.

..."

Well, I signed up for Prime yesterday, mainly for The Grand Tour.

First four episode summaries available. I'm curious what James May did that had them in the UK for two episodes in a row. Did he fall off something again?


Episode 1: The Holy Trinity (California)
The blurb: "The Grand Tour kicks off in California, USA, when Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May take their famous studio tent to Dry Rabbit Lake. Hundreds of fans from across the U.S. travelled to the desert, near Lucerne Valley, outside of Los Angeles, California to be part of the first ever episode of Jeremy, Richard and James’ new show for Amazon Prime."

What we want to know: Why start in Dry Rabbit Lake? It's an out-of-the-way, rural place in the Mojave desert, surrounded on three sides by mountains. To put it bluntly, there's nothing there. Or is there something we don't know?

Episode 2: Operation Desert Stumble (Johannesburg)
The blurb: "Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May bring the travelling Grand Tour tent to The Cradle of Humankind near Johannesburg in South Africa. In this show, the three hosts are forced to become special forces soldiers with an all action challenge at a top secret training base, deep within Jordan. Also in this episode, Jeremy introduces the 800 horsepower Aston Martin Vulcan to the Grand Tour test track, and James is sent to investigate an unusual form of motorsport called spinning."

What we want to know: We have so many questions. Why do they become soldiers? Do we actually get to see the "secret" base in Jordan? Why would anyone give Clarkson access to firearms? And isn't spinning a bit dangerous? (The sport, which started in the Soweto region of Johannesburg, is mainly done illegally and has caused severe injuries.)

Most importantly, what's Clarkson eating in that photo, and could we have some?

Episode 3: Opera, Arts and Donuts (Whitby)
The blurb: "Friday 2nd December 2016 The Grand Tour travelling tent pitches up on the quayside in the English coastal town of Whitby from where Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May introduce a modern take on the traditional gentleman’s tour of Italy. With Jeremy in an Aston Martin DB11 and James in a Rolls-Royce Dawn, the pair are set for a leisurely trip of culture and fine dining until a noisy and unwelcome guest arrives."

What we want to know: Who is the "unwelcome guest"? Jimmy Carr was photographed on a jet-ski, filming an action-packed segment of the show in Whitby harbour, but he isn't necessarily the only suspect: Simon Pegg was also seen in Whitby while The Grand Tour was in town.

From Clarkson's cod piece to Jimmy Carr's jet ski: what really happened when The Grand Tour hit Whitby

Episode 4 – Enviro-mental (Whitby)
The blurb: "The Grand Tour studio tent is back in Whitby, England for various complicated reasons, some of which are James’s fault. In this show, Jeremy Clarkson tests the Porsche 911 GT3 RS, desperately trying to remain impartial despite knowing that Richard Hammond owns one, and then compares it to the track-focused BMW M4 GTS. Also in this episode, the hosts become unusually ecological as they attempt to create cars made of truly sustainable materials before taking part in what’s billed as a green motorsport event."

What we want to know: What's James May done now? Captain Slow must have caused a serious mishap to scupper the show's itinerary, and we're keen to find out what it is. Also, Clarkson is every environmentalist's nightmare: how on earth was he convinced to take part in a "green" event?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/on-demand...plot-outlines/

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/j...ng-out-8698772

LOL, is 'falling out of a pub' a Brit euphemism for 'falling down drunk'??

I guess they might have meant it literally in his case too.

But really, if you can still walk out of a pub then you haven't been in there long enough.

Premieres tomorrow! Looking forward to this. As an FYI, amazon is offering a discount for new members until tomorrow. So if you were thinking of joining, now would be the time.

Update; it actually starts today in the US. (but I will wait until tomorrow to watch with friends).
http://jalopnik.com/the-grand-tour-w...e-u-1789056123

First episode is now available to watch on Amazon

Just finished the first episode. my opinion is it didn't live up to the hype. The opening and the films were good, the rest not so much. Will see what next week brings.

I will probably watch this at the weekend. Early feedback I've been reading said that the usual car segments are as good as ever but the tent audience setup is lame and poorly done and the "American Stig" guy is annoying.

I hope this isn't the same result we got from New Top Gear, but in reverse. Good presenters, lame format vs bad presenters and okay format. I just wanted car segments and challenge adventures, I wasn't hoping for a new Stig and more studio audience bits with this show.

I really enjoyed the first episode. No major complaints here. Now I know which hypercar to buy! I wish.

Does this show have HDR?

I watched it last night and just pulled it up again this morning and no HDR for me either time.

I watched Episode 1 earlier and it was indeed 4K HDR. It looked beautiful, very film-like.

Clarkson and the boys have changed the format of their new show from their Top Gear days a bit but the new show is just as entertaining as the old one. The rebooted Top Gear isn't in the same world as The Grand Tour. Episode 1 was gutsy. Some of its humor was really dark, maybe too dark for some, but I howled all the way through it. (Hint: look for Jeremy Renner and Army Hammer. ) Highly recommended!

I will add that I intend to at least start the new season of Top Gear and see where it goes but I'm not optimistic.

I enjoyed all the actual car scenes. Some of the comedy with the audience kind of dragged on to me, but didn't deter me from watching.

Visually, this was a joy to watch. I don't own a UHD Bluray player yet, but this was one of the best looking 4K HDR streaming shows I've seen.
I'll keep it on my watch list just for the images alone.

The UHD version wasn't listed earlier Thursday when I went to watch. I went back yesterday for the 4K and watched again and yes the 4K HDR was magnificent.

I realize it's sacrilege to say this here, but I watched it on a lowly 1080P TV. Even still, the picture quality was stunning. I used to watch Top Gear on Dish, so it was potentially bandwidth-starved 1080i anyway.

Sent from my HTC6535LVW using Tapatalk

At best I would say this was an average episode of Old New Top Gear.

For over an hour of running time (and the astronmical reported cost) there was surprisingly little content. Sure some of it was setup, like the track and tent, but the variety was missing. Usually you would get a lengthy challenge road trip or a few car features covering different locations, history or straight review. The choice of cars was great but it was mostly sitting on a track. Not much depth in the segment. True, they covered each car before but they could have thrown in a feature on something related like Formula E or an old electric car from Leno's collection to demonstrate the leap.

They started in a wave of weird autos, featuring some of those would have been good.

The celebrity gag was fine with just Renner but then it went on far too long and the fake fight was just utterly pointless filler. I heard the celebrity bit will be recurring. I hope that's not true.

Some of the 4K scenes were the best I have seen so far in that format. Don't tell me there is no difference between HD and 4K.

I agree that 4K HDR at its best, such as the first episode of The Grand Tour was, is clearly superior to 1080P. Plain 4K, though, is only marginally so, or at least it seem slo to me.

The freakin' Amazon Fire TV only has HDMI 1.4 so it doesn't support HDR. I was able to watch with HDR via the Samsung UHD player.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...ericanism.html

I watched this twice. Not too keen on the whole audience thing and I skipped the celebrity... stuff... on the 2nd viewing.

However, even with those minor niggles, the show cleansed all that was bad about the entire first season of the previous Top Gear season. I'm down to go with this.

Top Gear is dead. Long live The Grand Tour...

Seggers

This echoes my feelings exactly. I do have hope that it gets better

I thought it was great. The opening sequence (especially the song, which was very clever), was fantastic. Supposedly it cost over $3M to make. Just wish they showed a little more of all those cars driving up. The 4k HDR was fantastic (although I don't think as good as The Last Tycoon). Overall, a good "Top Gear" episode. Looking forward to the next couple of seasons.

I watched in 1080p. I thought it was average content wise, picture quality it was the best I've seen yet since I've only seen in 1080i. If it was supposed to knock me out of the park, it didn't. I've seen every episode of Top Gear and have most of them saved so I can say there's better episodes behind them for sure, but that's ok. I'm glad the trio is back even if it isn't Top Gear.

I have to say I was getting tired of some of the format of Top Gear anyway. The Star in a Reasonably Priced Car for one. It was mostly UK stars I'd never heard of, occasionally you get one that everyone's heard of but even still the segment seemed played out to me and when I rewatch I usually skip those parts anyway.

The News, so it's unclear if they're doing The News from this episode. They posted a picture of a new Prius but didn't go any further with it, testing the waters maybe? I think this one falls into a gray area. Their legal team is avoiding using the same format and trademarks but where do you draw the line? Obviously the Star In a Reasonably Priced Car, the Stig all have to be left behind but they're still doing the same film features and gags which is the core of Top Gear. So is that considered infringement? I would have to say no and hopefully the BBC just leave them alone.

It wouldn't bother me if they just removed some of that filler time anyway and just give us more film segments and races/challenges. Change is good. When the Cool Wall burned down I think it was like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazi symbol is burned to a crisp, just had to be done.

I actually bought a new HDR compatible TV over the weekend, primarily to watch this (also I wanted to wall mount and that just wasn't going to happen with my DLP). The HDR was cool. But was it just me, or was there lots of banding, especially the sky in outdoor scenes? I find Netflix HDR to be superior to Amazon (my TV supports both formats). But their selection is pretty limited.

The in studio (err tent) part was OK. The new test track is cool, and of course they gave us what we've all been waiting for the 918/P1/La Ferrari shootout. Props for not making us wait til the last episode for that.

I thought it was a pretty decent opening for a series. I have no doubt it will get better as it finds its grove. Alot of folks are annoyed because it's 'different'. People don't like change. Can't wait for the standard 'stig' to be worked out. I think they had 2 or 3 different ones in the opening show.

I'm confident the show will only get better from here.