Over the years, Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have been a part of some truly amazing TV specials stretching right back to Top Gear. We of course remember the classics such as Botswana and the USA, plus the ill-fated but still spectacular Patagonia special. More recently on The Grand Tour we’ve had the Mongolia and Seamen specials, plus the brand new A Scandi Flick adventure which might be the best one yet from The Grand Tour.
At the heart of it all has been producer Andy Wilman, who has produced the show from the Top Gear days and right up to the present with The Grand Tour. He has overseen so many special adventures with the trio culminating in this latest adventure. Recently, he sat down with IGV Presents for a video on their YouTube channel to break down some of the most iconic specials he has been a part of throughout his career. He is lucky that he has been able to oversee some utterly incredible adventures with the three presenters.
Breaking Down The Latest Scandinavia Adventure
Willman starts by talking about A Scandi Flick, and it was actually resurrected from the ashes as they were originally going to do it in Russia from a gulag and up to Murmansk. Then Covid-19 got in the way of that, after a lot of preparation for the special was done in early 2020. They took the bones of the idea, and of course couldn’t go to Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, and headed to Scandinavia to revive the special in a different special. The rally cars were chosen so they could have cars that were fast and sexy on ice, without losing any performance.
Wilman also touched upon the accident with May in the tunnel, and he was actually on a Zoom call with a guy who had a cargo plane that wanted to film with when the accident happened. Asking if they were good with safety, Willman responded just as someone came in and said May had a big crash! Wilman then moves onto the Seamen special, the title actually coming from the Amazon marketing team. The idea of using boats was born out of a decision to switch things up a bit and take a break from cars, and the ending with the South China Sea was just a spectacle and a half.
Moving On To More Iconic Specials
That was brutal, and Wilman said on the day The Grand Tour crossed the sea, lives were lost further down the sea. Amazingly, all of the presenters and film crew were able to get through that mess. The Top Gear special in the USA, with the three $1,000 cars, was next up on the agenda. Wilman said the film was originally meant to just be 25 minutes, but there was enough material for a whole show. Rather than cut the show and throw footage away, they decided to put it out as a whole show.
Purely by accident, it worked. And they all acted as if it was meant to be a special all along, but it did lead to other specials. Wilman actually spoke about how it took the three a while to find their rhythm, and applauded the BBC for letting the chemistry between the three to mesh and gel, and it had done so by 2007 when the USA special was out. Then there were the politically incorrect slogans that nearly led to a riot at an Alabama gas station.
She Said She Was Going To Get The Boys
That heading is a quote from the show, when they pulled into a gas station and things kicked off when the rednecks saw the logos. It was then “terrifying” as Wilman said, with only getting out of Argentina scarier than that. The team just got into their cars and ran off, and they weren’t prepared of course for the carnage that was about to unfold. Anyone watching it will remember just how terrifying the footage was as the team scrambled to remove the logos from the cars.
Preparing For More Grand Tour Specials
Eventually, a policeman pulled the Top Gear team over which dispersed the rednecks. He did give them a big telling off for what they did, rightly so as Wilman said, but he was quite polite about it all. There has been some footage on social media of the trio in Kraków getting ready for their next special, so we know more is coming from Wilman and the boys in the not too distant future. We are hugely excited for what is to come, with A Scandi Flick perhaps being the best special in recent years that the team have been involved in. We just can’t wait.
Source: IGV Presents YouTube Channel