The Grand Tour

Richard Hammond Teases A Second Series To New Show The Great Escapists

Richard Hammond may usually be behind the wheel of cars on The Grand Tour, but his latest show that stars him alongside Tory Belleci has hit it off already. Now, the ex-Top Gear star is teasing a second series.

The two presenters applied their knowledge of science and engineering (and scriptwriting) to create incredible vehicles that would help them survive on the deserted island they found themselves on after a shipwreck. The show takes jabs at Jeremy Clarkson, and is littered with jokes and funny plot points. It’s very obviously aimed towards children, which is fine, and it doesn’t stop fans of Hammond and Bellci watching all the episodes at once in a good day of binging.

Moments before the premiere of the show, Hammond was interviewed about the future of this new part of his career:

“I’d love to go back,” he said.

“I’d love to make the show all over again. We had such a great time doing it.”

He continued: “I’ve said lots of times, you know, TV folk, it filters out those who aren’t going to get on, (and they) don’t do it for long. But when you know you’re gonna be away with a bunch of people for two months, you know if I’m a pain in the backside, everybody’s life is worse.

“So everybody gets on. So they [the crew] were fabulous. They were great company, they’re a great bunch.

“We would all at the drop of a hat tomorrow go straight back out and do it all again – as I’m sure would any of us.”

Hammond also admitted that while the show as filmed early last year before the UK’s lockdown, it felt like he was preparing himself for what was to come.

“Bear in mind we were locked down effectively because there was only us on the island,” he explained.

“We saw no other faces for the whole time we were there – and this is before Covid was invented.

“So then we came back and four days later the country went into lockdown.

“We got off the aeroplane at Heathrow thinking, ‘Brilliant, I’m back home and go wherever I want and see my friends. What? Lockdown?’ That’s the end of that.”

He also gave away some information on where it was filmed.

“It was off Panama, we researched the world to find somewhere where we knew we’d get the right weather at the right time of year.

“And that would be quiet, that there’d be nobody else on but that we could get 70 people onto, so we had to be able to land the plane there and boats.

“We had to ship everything we needed for the shoot. We were there for overall eight or nine weeks, so it’d be seven weeks of filming with 60 or 70 people, we had to get everything there and be able to live and work.

“So that’s why that place was chosen and it was perfect. We had beaches, a lot of flies, crocodiles, sharks, seawater, and trees.”

He added: “Yeah, that’s what we needed. It wasn’t a big island and we filmed all over it, we certainly saw it.

“It had everything we needed. It had all the different scenes within a small area that we wanted to create.”

The six episodes of the show will take fans across the whole island. It’s available to watch now on Amazon Prime Video.

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