How even Jeremy Clarkson got bored of cars, thrills and ‘banter’

When historians come to contemplate when the Lengthy Noughties ended, they might nicely select 13 September, 2024. It marks the final episode of The Grand Tour, the post-Prime Gear Amazon Prime sequence during which Jeremy Clarkson, James Could and Richard Hammond picked up the place they’d left off on the BBC: extra daft challenges, extra mad stunts, extra far-flung street journeys and much more swaggering, guffawing blokey banter. Some would possibly name this final drive the top of an period – however actually, this trio’s period was over way back.

Issues have modified for the reason that three first got here collectively on Prime Gear in 2002. Clarkson has become the saviour of the British countryside on Clarkson’s Farm. Could has been allowed to tinker in his workshop like he at all times needed, making his personal gin and fixing toy trains on BBC 4’s The Reassembler. Hammond, who was fairly the little heartthrob again within the noughties along with his bootcut denims and spiky fringe, has managed to mix Alan Partridge’s hair and nation squire-lite wardrobe with David Brent’s goatee. They’re so removed from recent that it’s straightforward to neglect fairly how a lot of a handbrake flip Prime Gear felt after they first acquired behind the wheel.

The unique Prime Gear – which started in 1977 – had felt like a mixture of Watchdog and somebody from the council coming into your major college to inform you methods to cross the street. “Sue Baker studies on the worth of air deflectors to avoid wasting gasoline, significantly as they relate to caravans,” learn one tantalising Radio Instances preview. One other hard-hitting episode promised: “The MOT check continues to be controversial. Is the interpretation constant from station to station and does the motorist get a good deal?”

However the reboot was one thing altogether totally different. Out went honest client recommendation; in got here celebs doing scorching laps in a mid-range saloon automotive. Prime Gear wasn’t for the standard motorist any extra; it was for petrolheads, individuals who liked the “thought” of vehicles as a lot – presumably extra – than really driving them. Its combination of daft challenges, worldwide journey, and banter that danced merrily throughout the road of what was acceptable, made it genuinely enjoyable to observe in a method that MOT comparisons stubbornly refused to. It’s arduous, as an example, to think about Sue Baker uttering Could’s catchphrase: “Oh, cock.”

Ripping out almost all the things that may be of any sensible use to somebody driving a automotive, abruptly Prime Gear turned one thing you didn’t want a driving licence to love. The three hosts regarded and appeared like overgrown boys having monumental enjoyable amusing themselves, mainly as a result of they have been. I don’t suppose it’s overstating it to say that they have been a mannequin of what mid-Noughties Britain thought wholesome males – and male friendship – must be: humorous, and a bit imply, however large and powerful sufficient to take it.

It turned appointment viewing, and one thing half the world needed to license its personal model of. By the center of the 2010s, between the worldwide rights, the DVDs, the merch and the books, Prime Gear was value £50m a 12 months to the BBC.

There was an entire Prime Gear ethos, too. It’s fairly uncommon {that a} TV programme – a lot much less a Sunday evening factual journal present that includes three middle-aged males – creates its personal worldview. However Prime Gear had a persona. It appreciated rock music made between 1971 and 1983, it appreciated pre-distressed leather-based biker jackets, it fancied Gillian Anderson, and it thought this political correctness stuff was a load of bloody garbage. For some time Clarkson, Hammond and Could have been King Dads, every representing a aspect of the last word dad: Clarkson, the funniest man within the pub; Could, the nerdish shed-dweller; Hammond, the dashing man about city. 

But as issues went on, a way of drift set in. The globetrotting adventures acquired increasingly ostentatious, the pranks extra predictable, the Boomerish anti-PC grumbling metastasising into one thing extra horrible. 

There was the 2014 furore over Clarkson reciting a model of “eeny meenie miney mo” which appeared to incorporate the n-word, and a sly joke throughout a Thai street journey which used a slur towards south-east Asian folks. And informal homophobia turned a operating theme: a Jaguar XKRS would, Clarkson as soon as joked, “get its tail out extra readily than George Michael” – a jibe Michael himself known as out.

It’s truthful to say the Angela Rippon or Tiff Needell years wouldn’t have troubled the Mexican ambassador to the UK. However these three did. “These offensive, xenophobic and humiliating remarks solely serve to bolster unfavourable stereotypes and perpetuate prejudice towards Mexico and its folks,” Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza stated in 2011, complaining about an episode during which Hammond advised a Mexican automotive could be “lazy, feckless, flatulent, chubby, leaning towards a fence, asleep, taking a look at a cactus with a blanket with a gap within the center on as a coat”.

And but none of it made any distinction. The three amigos have been, by the mid-2010s, just about untouchable, too large a hit to rein in. “At that time,” Could stated later, “it was reckoned it had one thing like 350-360 million viewers.”

However, infamously, all of it fell aside. In 2015, in one of many largest BBC scandals of the period (and absolutely that includes essentially the most euphemistic use of the phrase “fracas” in latest occasions) Clarkson punched producer Oisin Tymon and left him with a bloodied lip. An inside BBC inquiry discovered that Clarkson known as him “lazy” and “Irish”, and Tymon received £100,000 in a discrimination and harm declare. Two weeks later Clarkson’s BBC contract was terminated. First Could, after which Hammond, introduced they’d stroll away too. That shortly, one of many BBC’s largest properties basically dissolved. 

Instantly, it turned clear that it was the three of them holding the automotive present on the street. Prime Gear continued with new presenters however began flailing, mixing and matching personalities hoping to evoke that previous chemistry that can not be pressured. But through the mercifully temporary Chris Evans debacle – he stepped apart after a single sequence – viewing figures dropped from 4.3 million to 2.8 million. The ultimate sequence with Clarkson, Hammond and Could had averaged round 6.4 million.

In the meantime, the unique trio went over to Amazon. The Grand Tour began in 2016, however the automotive present not appeared sufficient to gasoline them. Clarkson discovered a 3rd act taking his Clarksoning to the nation; Could acquired to indulge his ardour for fiddling about with issues on charming BBC 4 programmes; Richard Hammond’s holding busy along with his Loopy Contraptions, Mind Response and Britain’s Stunning Rivers. Even The Grand Tour was at the least as a lot a journey present by the top, taking you on a tour of cinematic landscapes you’re unlikely ever to go to in your Vectra.

In actual fact, no person makes automotive reveals anymore. Is that as a result of local weather change is a lot extra pressing and horrifying than it was within the Noughties, and the unique sexiness of supercars has become one thing queasier? No – there are sufficient electrical vehicles to fill a Prime Gear sequence by now. Reasonably it’s that the blokey bullishness that outlined Prime Gear and The Grand Tour has began to curdle.

Look wherever on British TV and also you’ll discover the shift. Gogglebox, Taskmaster, Race Throughout the World, Mortimer and Whitehouse Gone Fishing – even Bake Off, lengthy earlier than them. Audiences prize earnestness, empathy, silliness and gentleness greater than gunmetal gray and juvenile, laddish pratting about. And that shift has additionally slowly modified a lot of the bravado we have been keen to ask of our TV stars. For those who might be entertained by members of the general public baking desserts in a tent, is it actually essential to ask them to place their lives in danger in a supercar?   

That, ultimately, was what introduced Prime Gear to a pointy halt. In December 2022 Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff’s horror crash whereas filming for the present left him facially scarred and with damaged ribs. It wasn’t the primary time. In 2006, Richard Hammond survived a horrible accident in a drag racer. “I used to be driving after which it was two weeks later and I used to be in Leeds,” he recalled just a few months later. A tyre blowout led to the automotive flipping and rolling off the runway at 288mph. Hammond was in a medically induced coma for a fortnight and had mind accidents. “There was a degree after I couldn’t daydream,” he stated. “It was very horrifying, very unusual.”

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It was terrible. However Hammond was welcomed again with a show of sarcastic celebrations: fireworks and dancing ladies met him as he walked into the studio for his first present after the crash. In 2022 issues, although, have been totally different, not least as a result of Flintoff’s bodily accidents have been so horrifying. “Genuinely shouldn’t be right here after what occurred,” he mirrored per week afterwards. The daredevil spirit that had outlined Prime Gear in its prime appeared so pointless. Leaving a nationla treasure with horrible accidents, smashing up his face and giving him nightmares and flashbacks, within the title of an eight-minute section, was not value it. Particularly not when hazard and adrenaline had turn out to be such an viewers turn-off.

That hazard and adrenaline, that trademark banter, lusting after unattainable motors, have been what as soon as revved Prime Gear and The Grand Tour into turbo-hits. Now they’re precisely what make them really feel so out of step. Even the fanfare for the three hosts’ last journey has been muted – I think even they is likely to be glad to not must provide you with any extra pranks. Who’s stunned Clarkson, Hammond and Could are parking up? The automotive present has been operating on fumes for years.

‘The Grand Tour: One for the Highway’ is streaming on Prime Video