Top Gear was once a cultural bete noire, its petrolhead-in-chief, Jeremy Clarkson, a symbol of boorish, driving-in-the-cycle-lane male privilege. As is the way of such things, this made him both universally loathed and engine-revvingly popular.
But Top Gear has since remade itself as a touchy-feely bastion of anti-laddishness, and Clarkson and the gang are off doing the grand tour — or, sort of, the Grand Tour, which finished its regular seasons on Prime Video several years ago and now returns for random one-offs in far-flung corners of the world.
[ Jeremy Clarkson being hoofed in the testes. Now that’s what I call eroticaOpens in new window ]
Amazon has, in other words, filleted the Top Gear formula, chucking out most of the car stuff and focusing on the bits everyone loved: the lavish travel features where the presenters get stuck in the mud and have amusing interactions with locals.
This time, for The Grand Tour: A Scandi Flick (Prime Video), it’s off to Scandinavia for a film that doubles as a tribute to Nordic rally driving. (The “Scandi flick” is a method of cornering involving oversteering into a turn while reducing speed.) Our fun begins in Norway, where Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond show off their authentic rally cars — May has a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Hammond a Subaru Impreza etc — and then zoom down a tunnel.
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This proves surprisingly treacherous: May’s Mitsubishi judders temporarily out of control and comes to a crashing halt. He’s off to hospital while Clarkson and Hammond — who points out that, usually, he’s the one who crashes — pummel around a race circuit etched on a frozen lake.
It’s Boy’s Own stuff starring three grumpy geezers from down the pub. (May repairs his Lancer and is soon chugging towards the Swedish border in lukewarm pursuit of his compatriots.) And, as is the Clarkson tradition, it is neither clever nor especially illuminating in matters car-based.
But, at a time when it feels that everything on TV is trying to sell you something or preach to you, the cheerful blokey chaos that is the Grand Tour’s stock in trade has its charms. It’s also very rare nowadays to see on our screens three middle-aged men who aren’t much good at anything beyond banter.
[ The BBC still rues the day Jeremy Clarkson hit an IrishmanOpens in new window ]
This is men’s-sheds TV with the handbrake off. And with Clarkson behind the wheel it is as enjoyable and inconsequential as a whizz through the countryside with the window rolled down so nobody in the family knows you’ve been enjoying a sneaky cigarette. Just be warned: to wrest any enjoyment from it, you’ll have to leave your brain in the glovebox.
