Is It Just Me, Or Was The Grand Tour A Bit Boring?
After wrapping up at the LA Auto Show today, I went straight back to my hotel room, whipped out my laptop and headed straight for Amazon Prime. Yep, there was no way I was going to wait to watch the Grand Tour - wherever I was, I was going to get stuck into Clarkson, Hammond and May’s hugely anticipated car show.
However, from the drawn out, rather self-congratulatory and apparently very expensive opening scene onwards, it just didn’t excite me all that much.
Perhaps the problem was the Holy Trinity test that made up much of the episode. Sure, in the final days of Clarkson-era Top Gear we were all desperate to see the LaFerrari, McLaren P1 and Porsche 918 Spyder have a massive showdown, but that was rather a long time ago. And anyway, Chris Harris did that same test with the same cars and on the same track over a year ago, and I’d argue he did a better, more entertaining job of it.
Elsewhere, the celebrity segment trod a fine line between being amusing and downright stupid, and ‘The American’ was thoroughly unfunny. Suddenly I get why the Stig never utters a word…
There was plenty to like, though. The cinematography is stunning, for a kick off. It was cool seeing ‘our’ BMW M2 longtermer get damn good thrashing in the road test which apparently wasn’t a road test even though it was kind of a road test around the new, brilliantly gnarly ‘Eboladrome’ track too. But overall it just didn’t quite live up to the massive hype.
It’s far too soon to judge, of course: we have a 12 episode run to enjoy in this series alone, and perhaps after a few installments the trio will settle into their new environment a little better. As it stands, everything just feels a tad forced.
What did you think of the episode?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
It was literally just you. only issue was the whole star in a car thing but it was outstanding.
Damn it was very good
This is absolute rubbish
Well in some segment I was like: “meh not that great, could have been better” and then 5 seconds later “this is what I was waiting for, it’s great, best thing ever”. Overall good and even if I’m one of the few people that liked it, still about 10000% better than the new top gear.
I was just a little hung up on the girl with glasses and a shiny white smile wich was behind Clarkson when they were in the studiotent…
I disagree with this article, I really enjoyed the first episode…it was great to have the trio back doing what they are good at and for a first episode it still felt familiar and unforced. There is a huge platform to work on now as well so I really think this show will greatly surpass what can ever be done on the top gear format.
After the opening scene I thought it was very average. The trio test was no where near as good as harris’s attempt.
The new track section was rubbish especailly the american driver.
Still it’s early days.
Not a fan of the 2.5 million pound opening scene but glad they’re still hostile to the drone shooting Americans
I found it to be very entertaining and I’m looking forward to the next one.
I think that s1 e1 of The Grand Tour was beter than the whole season 23 of top gear