THE GRAND TOUR is returning for the third – and, if rumours are true, final – season. I’ll just leave it at that, really, because the trailer is SWEET:

Gentlemen, I have a terrible confession to make…

I still have not finished watching the second season of THE GRAND TOUR.

In my defence – and it is not much of one – I haven’t had my TV, surround sound system, and Xbox with me since, oh, the end of May. So I have not really been able to watch anything much beyond YouTube and Netflix videos. It just doesn’t make much sense to watch something as awesome as THE GRAND TOUR without a really good TV and sound system.

Because, let’s face facts, the video and sound are awesome.

The budget and production values for this show are definitely top-rate. Amazon clearly invested a hell of a lot of money into making this show successful.

Did the show live up to expectations? Well… kind of.

The first season was a bit hit-or-miss. There were a couple of segments that longtime fans of TOP GEAR – also known as THE GREATEST TV SHOW OF ALL TIME, at least at this ‘ere very ‘eavy, very ‘umble blog – absolutely hated. The two that come to mind are, of course, “Celebrity Brain Crash” and the car driving segments around the EbolaDrome by “The American”.

See, the reason why TOP GEAR worked so well, at least from the 2nd to the 23rd series, is because the the production teams essentially put together a veddy British cast of the three blokiest blokes ever to bloke across a TV stage – and then let them get on with being blokes. That specifically meant giving them room to act like, well, Brits.

It also helped that the Stig was a silent racing driver, so one did not need to listen to his commentary, inane or otherwise, as he was tearing up the concrete and burning rubber driving some of the world’s most epic cars at extreme speeds around the old Lotus-designed TG test track.

“The American”, by contrast, was a loudmouth and a grouch that very few people particularly liked. Oddly enough, I mostly did like “The American”‘s segments in the first series, mostly because I actually understand American humour and have no particular problem with rednecks who love guns, pickup trucks, and muscle cars.

Most of the show’s global audience, of course, thoroughly disagreed.

The second series proved to be considerably better, mostly because they ditched what didn’t work and stuck with what did. And it appears that the third series has built upon the good stuff from the second – not, of course, that I can speak with any significant authority on the subject, since I have not watched the second series all the way through.

At any rate, if this is, indeed, the very last series of THE GRAND TOUR, then that is bittersweet news, given how good the trailer looks. If the series itself is as good as the trailer indicates, then we are definitely in for a real treat and an absolutely gut-busting set of episodes.