Jeremy Clarkson has confirmed that the next episode of The Grand Tour, the Madagascar Special, will be sent off to Amazon in two weeks. In a conversation filmed by DriveTribe with executive producer Andy Wilman, who only recently recovered from Covid-19, they discussed what was happening with the Amazon Prime Video show after the effects of the virus.

While the episode will be in Amazon’s hands, they can’t be sure exactly when the episode will be shown. “Amazon never tells us when they’re going to put it out until they’re sure because we have big gobs,” said Wilman.

Jeremy Clarkson added: “So if you want to know when the next instalment is coming, ask Amazon, not us.”

Amazon will surely want to launch an advertising campaign, but they better be quick as a global lockdown is the best time to launch the new episode to ensure the highest viewing numbers. I’d guess we’ll be seeing a trailer probably within the next month, but hopefully sooner.

But why has it taken this long to produce the second episode of Season 4? Wilman explains:

“Most shows shoot a 10:1 ratio, which means they shoot 10 hours for every one hour that goes on TV. We shoot 1,000:1. Most of that is the three guys talking. The guys do have off buttons for microphones – Hammond gets confused and turns his microphone off when he’s talking about the car, but when he’s talking about Mindy [his wife] or horse b*ll*cks it’s on.”

Clarkson interjects: “That’s twice as much as David Attenborough shoots waiting for polar bears to come out.”

Wilman finishes: “It then takes five weeks to get all the footage into the machine because it’s 4K and all that stuff. That’s before an editor can access it – then there’s five weeks of him breaking it down, taking out the bits of James [May] having a fag. Then he has to match up all the cameras. Then there was Christmas. Then there’s three months of shaping it – we set off without a script so there’s a lot of back and forth.”

Here

We can’t wait for the second special episode of this Season. If you want to know more about it, then click here.

Let’s hope they don’t take their time!