Why The Grand Tour is escapist TV of the very first rank

Ed Power argues that the uncomplicated escapism pioneered by Clarkson is exactly what is required in these overwhelming and divisive times

It’s very much a case of “as you were” on Planet Jeremy Clarkson as The Grand Tour prepares to zoom back onto our screens. Fast cars, boys-will-be-boys banter and globe-trotting bonhomie all feature in the trailer to season three of Amazon’s souped-up ratings juggernaut. Adjust your driving goggles and you could be watching the BBC’s Top Gear from 16 years ago, which was when Clarkson and his cohorts embarked on their unlikely ascent to their present position as international television superstars.

Clarkson naysayers will use the formulaic nature of the promo as a stick with which to slap him around his dad-jeans. They will also obviously upbraid the presenter and co-hosts James May and Richard Hammond as dinosaurs of light entertainment. When not venerating one of the most environmentally destructive forces ever unleashed upon the planet – that would be the internal combustion engine – the jowly threesome are, goes the critique, inevitably creased over in fits of schoolboy giggles. Shouldn’t everybody – they and us alike – be past all that by now?

But there is a contrary view and it is that the uncomplicated escapism pioneered by Clarkson is exactly what is required in these overwhelming and divisive times. Just as comfort eating or a quiet pint at the end of a long day have their place, so, it might be argued, does The Grand Tour.

“Slow TV” tends to be synonymous with four-hour broadcasts from Norway of a train circumnavigating a fjord. It could be contended, though, that The Grand Tour and, before it, Clarkson-era Top Gear appeal to the same urge to decouple and leave our brain in the glovebox.

Some of us switch off with pilates or long-distance running. But there are others for whom watching Richard Hammond become trapped on a wonky suspension bridge above the Colombian jungle – the centrepiece of the new trailer – fulfils the same function.

Clarkson fans are typically stereotyped as gents of a certain vintage. Obviously the caricature is misleading, with audiences attending Grand Tour studio tapings running the gamut of age, gender and appearance.

Still, it’s no mystery why the juvenile antics celebrated on the show would appeal to those who might consider themselves slightly over the hill and whooshing downwards. The older you get, the more it can feel as if life’s responsibilities are trying to crush all the spark out of you. You are worried about being usurped at work by younger rivals. Your kids see you as an unpaid Uber driver. There’s that crack in the ceiling to be mended and your wife is still on at you to book that anniversary getaway you promised after one craft beer too many.

As it all comes caving down in excruciating slow motion, how better to escape than to switch on The Grand Tour and join Clarkson and company in their alternative universe vision of middle age. What a Neverland it is.

They get to hopscotch across the world, with nobody ragging on them about their choice of clothes and absolutely no pressure to spend quality time with close family members. It’s a man shed with rockets attached. You close the door and suddenly you’re roaring across the Bonneville salt flats or taking a corner at the Nürburgring.

That the cars are a secondary consideration is something which, you suspect, has dawned imperceptibly yet steadily on Clarkson and co. Even in their Top Gear days they were never going to be mistaken for fronting a consumer affairs programme.

But with Amazon’s lucre at their service – the budget for the first three seasons of GT is in the region of £160m – they’ve left the automotive journalism concept behind entirely and floated off into an eternal stag weekend of international travel where there’s always a gleaming motor in the driveway and a barstool waiting at the end of a long evening driving.

Before we rhapsodise too much and drift away like one of those blimps that hover over Grand Prix circuits, it should of course be acknowledged that this blokey wish fulfilment has a darker side. Clarkson, after all, was sacked by the BBC for striking a co-worker. That was a nasty business no matter how you spin it and provided a glimpse of the ugly entitlement behind his “I’ll get the next round in” facade.

Nor, since moving to Amazon, have they completely renounced their previous incarnation as pub-bore provocateurs. Recall the kerfuffle in season one of The Grand Tour when Richard Hammond appeared to seriously suggest only gay men could like ice-cream.

It didn’t seem as if he was purposefully trying to offend. Rather, this was presented as a dearly held opinion and he came across as slightly taken aback that it could be considered divisive. What sort of crazy world do we live in where a causal line can no longer be drawn between a person’s sexual orientation and their penchant for frozen treats? The spectre of Clarkson’s previous comments about cyclists/Mexicans/Scottish people – to touch on several of his many Top Gear clangers – was back with a vengeance.

On the other hand, The Grand Tour trio have never been straightforward reactionaries. Clarkson hates cyclists but also affects a loathing of Americans. And his crush on Continental Europe is absolutely full on.

Just watch the GT episode shot in Mercedes Benz’s home town of Stuttgart and note Clarkson’s eagerness to ingratiate himself with the locals. He truly had them on a pedestal. Such are the contradictions that make the series so fascinating and which the BBC has failed to replicate with its rotating cast of new Top Gear hosts, of which Freddie Flintoff and Paddy McGuinness are merely the latest to be unveiled.

Clarkson is an implacable opponent of Brexit too, as he told the Daily Beast recently. When it was suggested that he had contributed to the populism that has led to the present debacle, he was genuinely horrified that anyone would think this of him.

“I don’t know how I’ve done that, I’ve described myself as pro-European for about 30 years,” he said. “I feel European, when I go to America and people ask where I from I say I’m from Europe. So I’m not sure how I contributed to a few coffin-dodgers in Barnsley deciding that they don’t want to live next to a Syrian.”

We shouldn’t, in other words, judge a car by its bonnet. The Grand Tour is loud and stupid and almost unwatchable if you aren’t in the mood for man-hugging derring-do. But it is also escapist TV of the very first rank and, in an age in which it feels harder and harder to switch off, we should be grateful it exists.