Last week, the new version of The Grand Tour dropped on the 2026 TV schedule, and you can watch it with a Prime subscription. The rebooted show has three new hosts taking over for the legendary Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond. I haven’t watched the whole series yet, but I can tell after watching a few episodes that it seems like the show has a problem that can’t be fixed. It’s not because the new hosts are bad, or that the show is poorly produced. It’s that we’ve seen this all before.
The Grand Tour Is Only Partly A Car Show
The original show, and Top Gear before it, was only kind of a car show (or motoring show, if you’re on the east side of The Pond). Sure, it was about cars, especially fast cars, but both Top Gear and The Grand Tour were really about the interactions between the three presenters. It wasn’t about which car was the fastest in the race; it was about how each presenter celebrated winning or lamented losing. The challenges were fun, but not as fun as the hosts talking trash.
I think the three new hosts, James Engelsman, Thomas Holland, and Francis Bourgeois, are great. The problem is, they are reliving the same kind of challenges that May, Hammond, and Clarkson faced and talking the same kind of trash. There is nothing new. That is because over the 20+ years that the original presenters hosted Top Gear and The Grand Tour, they covered a lot of ground. It’s hard to find something new and unique when it comes to car shows, because they kind of did it all.
Top Gear Had The Same Problem
When Clarkson was fired from the BBC and May and Hammond followed him out the door and over to Prime, the BBC tried to keep Top Gear going with three new hosts (including Friends star Matt LeBlanc). It didn’t work. It just had an uncanny valley effect, because so much of the show was the same or only slightly different from the Top Gear we all knew and loved. The Grand Tour is now facing the same problem.
It’s three new hosts, including TikTok star Bourgeois, but they are doing the same things. Once again, there is an uncanny valley thing going on. As I said, I like the hosts, and the show does all the things I loved about the old show, with great cinematography, great editing, and awesome needle drops (The Stone Roses’ “Fool’s Gold” in episode 2, for example). That’s also the problem. It’s not original or different. I don’t think the show succeeds without copying what worked about the originals, but it’s never going to be as good as when it was all new and different from anything else on TV.
None of this is the fault of anyone involved. As I said, I think it’s all well done. It’s all great. It’s just not the same, and it never can be.
