The final special episode of The Grand Tour is set to release soon on Amazon Prime Video, which will see Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond head off on one final adventure. Titled 'One For The Road' the episode will see the trio head to Zimbabwe in three cars they've always wanted to own. This will be a Lancia Montecarlo, a Ford Capri 3-litre, and a Triumph Stag for Clarkson, Hammond and May respectively. Overall it will encompass "a stunning road trip through beautiful and sometimes challenging landscapes leading to an emotional ending on a strangely familiar island".
The concept for the episode echoes 2007's Top Gear special in Botswana, with Clarkson saying: "The premise of the original Botswana film was: why, when you leave London and move to Surrey, do you always buy yourself a 4x4? You don’t need one."
"To prove this, we decided to drive three perfectly ordinary cars across Botswana." He continued: "I've always liked the premise that cars are much tougher than you think they are. They can take so much punishment; people don't believe how much their car can take before it expires."
"So, we did a similar thing this time: the three that we took to Zimbabwe were, on the face of it, ridiculous, but as you can see in the film, they survive. The concept was just driving cars we liked." The Grand Tour: One For The Road is set to release on Amazon Prime Video in the UK on Friday, September 13.
The Grand Tour's Legacy
The programme officially aired its last series in 2021 but has been followed by three specials with 'A Scandi Flick' in September 2022, Eurocrash in June 2023 and Sand Job in February this year. The Grand Tour premiered back in November 2016 having been conceived in the wake of Clarkson, May and Hammond departing from Top Gear on the BBC. It followed a format similar to Top Gear's, with a focus on car reviews, challenges, races, and studio segments.
Discussing the show ending, Clarkson said: "I'm not saying this in a derogatory way by any means, but James has the emotions of a stone. He just doesn't do emotions, so there were no tears from him.
"Hammond, yes. I was surprisingly unemotional in a weird way because I can see James and Hammond any time I want to, they're only a phone call away, and I'm sure we will. And I've done enough of the travel, I was worn out by it."
An End of an Era?
The Grand Tour: One For The Road launches on Prime Video on Friday, September 13. The former trio of Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May are parting ways after more than two decades, writes Louis Chilton. Could it be that the British public have just stopped buying what they’re selling?
All good things must come to an end – and most bad things, too. When it was announced earlier this year that ex-Top Gear stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May would part ways after 22 years as a trio, you couldn’t really describe it as “going out with a bang”. A backfiring car exhaust, at a push. No, this could more accurately be described as an anticlimax – the Top Gear bandwagon’s slow crawl to a halt after burning up the last dregs of premium unleaded.
The long and short of it is this: W Chump & Sons, the production company belonging to Clarkson, Hammond, and May, has dissolved. The Grand Tour, Prime Video’s motoring, travel, and heterosexual banter-themed series and de facto successor to Top Gear, released its final episode today, 13 September. (The last hurrah, a special in which the three of them travel to Zimbabwe, was described by The Independent’s critic Nick Hilton as “a genuine closing of a chapter”.) Clarkson has claimed that the show is ending because “I’m too old and fat to get into the cars that I like and not interested in driving those I don’t.” But there are surely other reasons for this departure – and it doesn’t take too many deductive acrobatics to hazard a guess what they are. For two decades, the three presenters have been peddling the same regressive, unedifying programming, dogged along the way by a procession of controversies. If the series are popular and profitable – as, for years, they undoubtedly were – this isn’t seen as a problem. But now? It just might be.
The Grand Tour's Final Run
It's time to bid farewell to The Grand Tour. The end of the road has come for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May as they say goodbye to The Grand Tour in emotional scenes. In the final episode, titled One for the Road, the trio head to Zimbabwe in three cars they have always wanted to own. In a Lancia Montecarlo, a Ford Capri 3-litre, and a Triumph Stag, the boys visit their favourite location from 20 years of travelling the world.
As they bid farewell to their lives on The Grand Tour, a montage of flashbacks and present day clips are thrown into the final minutes of the two-hour episode. "What a way to end The Grand Tour. What a place," Clarkson says as he drives down a sandy path. In the final moments of One for the Road, which may prove to be an emotional viewing for those who have followed the presenting trio over the years, they each drive alongside one another as they reach Kubu Island. A particular poignant moment, flashbacks are shown from the first time the men all visited the island before it jumps back to the present day, as they recreate old scenes. Executive producer Andy Wilman said Kubu Island was "their favourite place in all the 18 years that we've been doing the specials", so they "knew the last minutes of the film needed to be there".
As they stood atop one of the boulders on the island, it was a wrap! "That's it," Hammond says before they all shake hands and say goodbye to the production crew. The trio then drive down out of Kubu Island and veer off into their separate ways, marking an end to The Grand Tour. Speaking of filming the ending, Hammond noted that it wasn't just emotional for the three of them but for the entire group of people who worked behind the scenes.
"We've worked together for decades and we've been through good times and bad," he said. "We've seen each other in jungles covered in leeches, exhausted and grumpy in tents and boiling heat, elated in the most beautiful cities in the world. We're a great big dysfunctional family, so there were a lot of tears." While Clarkson, Hammond and May all say goodbye to The Grand Tour, this isn't the end of the franchise. Earlier this month, Hammond confirmed that the series will continue, but with new presenters instead. "It will be carrying on," Hammond told Metro.co.uk. "The Grand Tour continues. We're stepping away as the hosts, but Prime will be continuing it. So I can’t wait to sit on my own chair and watch somebody else do it. That's amazing."
The Future of The Grand Tour
The Grand Tour: One for the Road is available to watch now on Prime Video. Try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
The Grand Tour: One For The Road is available to watch now on Prime Video. Try Amazon Prime Video for free for 30 days. Plus, read our guides to the best Amazon Prime series and the best movies on Amazon Prime. Check out more of our Entertainment coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
What's Next for Clarkson, Hammond, and May?
It's a mere eight years since The Grand Tour (Prime Video, Friday) began with Jeremy Clarkson driving across the Mojave Desert in California, accompanied by the Breitling Jet Team and with the Hothouse Flowers, of all people, on hand as the house band. A lot has happened in the intervening near-decade. Clarkson has had several close calls with cancellation – most notoriously following his disgraceful column about Meghan Markle – while his old show, Top Gear, is on hiatus following an accident involving new presenter Andrew Flintoff. But as Top Gear hangs about in television purgatory, The Grand Tour has gone one further and is motoring into the great beyond with its feature-length last ever instalment, One For The Road. It brings to an end a lifetime of internal combustion engine-based adventures by Clarkson and his co-hosts, Richard Hammond and James May. Their brand of television is Marmite on wheels, and some will cheer their departure. Fans will, of course, have a different perspective and for them this farewell episode – in which Clarkson, Hammond and May cross Zimbabwe in vintage autos – is a fair-to-middling affair. There is lots to like, but occasions, too, when the trio appear to be going through the motions. As send-offs go, it is more than passable – May and Hammond are emotional about exiting (Clarkson says he is but doesn’t sound it). They start in the Far East of Zimbabwe, where they have brought along three dream autos. Clarkson has a Lancia, Hammond a Ford Capri (the regulation banana-yellow hue, albeit with a black bonnet) and May a Triumph Stag. The adventure then proceeds in the traditional fashion. Hammond’s Capri breaks down repeatedly, his two companions shoot off ahead and are enjoying a relaxing beer when he finally rounds the bend. It’s bloke telly on cruise control. One For the Road has its moments – not all of them positive. Clarkson compares the interior of his car to “Calcutta”, earning jokey a reprimand from May. But there is no point in registering disapproval, as they’ve already pointed out. “Call us by all means to complain,” says Clarkson. “You’ll get a recorded message to say we’re not interested your call. Dial 1800 – Bugger Off!” Still, it isn’t all negative. The landscape is stunning – for some reason, Clarkson thinks mountainous Zimbabwe looks like Ireland (it is green and bumpy). And fans of the three going back to Top Gear (TG) will have a lump in their throat as the gang drive into Botswana and recall their first TG international special, filmed on the same salt-flats in 2007. Why are they giving it up? Clarkson (64) says he’s too old – though the success of his other Prime Video outing, Clarkson’s Farm, is surely a factor. Plus, as he acknowledges, times have changed and cars aren’t what they once were. “There are lots of reasons why we’re jacking this show in,” he says. “For me, one of the main ones is I’m simply not interested in electric cars. They are just white goods, washing machines, microwave ovens. You can’t review those, you can’t enjoy them. They are just ****.” The Grand Tour could probably have rumbled on a few more years. But just like the electric cars Clarkson despises, its batteries were ailing and, at the end of this thoroughly okay-ish instalment, it’s hard not to conclude that its race is run. As the end credits roll the only remaining questions are whether that’s that for car-based telly and if Clarkson should have invited Hothouse Flowers back to play him off.
