Former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed a deal for a new motoring show with Amazon. Amazon was also able to poach former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, a longtime friend of Clarkson’s and the figure credited with the show’s revival in the early 2000s.
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“Everyone we have talked to has said to us: “They leave you alone to make your show”.
The vice president of Amazon Prime EU, Jay Marine said that they received a lot of messages from their customers asking that the team should be united on the screen. “I feel like I’ve climbed out of a bi-plane and into a spaceship“, Clarkson said on the announcement that the trio would be filming three seasons of a new show for Amazon. The global deal commits the team to three seasons of the show, which is as yet unnamed.
Top Gear was also involved last year in a serious incident in Patagonia when allegedly the cars’ plates referred to the 1982 Falklands’ conflict, a highly sensitive issue in Argentina. I have already been there.
“Millions of Prime members are already enjoying our ground-breaking original shows. Ironic, isn’t it?” he said. But I can’t tell you how good it feels to get the chance to produce something from scratch. “We have become part of the new age of smart TV”.
The move is a major step into TV by Amazon who previously resurrected Ripper Street after it was axed by the BBC.
It was thought that Netflix would be the host of what many people are calling “the new Top Gear” (to Chris Evans’ annoyance, I presume), but it seems the relatively new streaming service from Amazon has beaten them to the punch. All of the series will only be available to Amazon Prime; Amazon’s video on-demand service.
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Another reason why the team may have avoided a broadcaster that relies on advertising revenue, rather than subscription revenue like Amazon Prime, is that there would have been commercial pressure to play nice when critiquing new vehicles, especially those produced by advertisers.
