When Top Gear’s Clarkson era spluttered to a steak-related end last year, even its staunchest fans – and, as the petitions to reinstate Clarkson proved, it still had a vast number of those – must have grudgingly accepted that the motorcade of man-child mayhem was past its prime. Its final series wasn’t bereft of fun segments (Hammond being dropped into the British Columbian wilderness was one highlight), but even these were blighted with the issues that had long outweighed its initial knockabout charm: bloated scenes of forced scripted comedy, an over-reliance on Hollywood visuals, and carefully plotted structured-reality taking the place of anything really happening. Glimmers of the trio’s off-the-cuff banter were there, but you had to squint to see them.

Nevertheless, when Clarkson, Hammond and May found themselves cast off, the acquisition of their services seemed like the surest deal a rival service could possibly make. At its demise, Top Gear still had worldwide viewing figures in the region of 350 million, making it the most-viewed factual (add your own air-quotes) programme in the world. A bidding war was inevitable and, even at a reported $160m, Amazon’s purchase seemed like a good deal for everyone. It got a vast pool of potential fans to cough up for Prime; those same fans still got their Top Gear, plus the tantalising possibility of goods delivered the same day; and the presenters, without the BBC’s finger for ever wagging in their direction, might finally get to make the show they always wanted to.

Only, four episodes in, it doesn’t feel like an exciting new start. It feels stale. Forced. Baggy. Tired. And this is because, as well as transplanting the presenting team (plus executive producer Andy Wilman) across from Top Gear, it has also carried across the baggage that made latter-day Top Gear fall flat. Worse, with the pool of cash Amazon provides, it’s cranked up these irksome indulgences to the point where bolts are popping out. The kernel of what made Top Gear a phenomenon – three men bickering, driving around and being rubbish – is almost entirely absent.

The kernel of what made Top Gear a phenomenon – three men bickering, driving around and being rubbish – is almost entirely absent. Photograph: Ellis O'Brien/Amazon

It must be said, though, the first episode did border on joyous. Its opening sequence – in which Jeremy went from a murky London to heading a Mad Max-style phalanx of supercars in California – had the pleasingly petulant sense of a show flashing the BBC a backwards finger “L” on its forehead, saying “look at all the money we’ve got”. Somehow you were on Clarkson’s side, despite the BBC only doing what any company would have if one of its employees had punched a producer in the face. The opening episode also introduced its various “new” segments, like Conversation Street, its new track and attendant tame racing driver. Its 80-minute runtime whizzed by on goodwill and these nuggets of novelty.

Then came the second episode, and everything started to unravel. In a pastiche of Tom Cruise sci-fi blow-em-up Edge of Tomorrow, the trio pretended to die only to be respawned, embarked on a car chase, caused some explosions, and Jeremy was shot in the nethers. That’s when it began to dawn: oh dear. They’ve got too much money. The quality control’s gone. No one at Amazon is saying “yes, but will it be entertaining?”

One of the most acute mistakes Clarkson’s iteration of Top Gear increasingly made was its blurring of the line between presenter and actor. May, Hammond and Clarkson are good presenters; they were never good actors. And it was the show requiring them to act that resulted in its most tiresome segments. The second episode of The Grand Tour was just play-acting. It was a dreary, self-indulgent lesson in how it is possible to take a £4m-per-episode budget and produce nothing of value. The over-scripted tedium arose again in the third episode, when Clarkson and May acted “surprised” when Hammond turned up on their Grand Tour road trip in a US muscle car, then “acted” like a child in it. The fourth likewise, with May “accidentally” demolishing Hammond’s sustainable car. With the huge sums being spent on set-pieces, scripting is the only way to ensure the required shots make the cut. The downside of this is that all spontaneity is jettisoned.

This is such an easy show to get right … which makes it all the more frustrating how staged and tiresome it can feel. Photograph: Ellis O'Brian

The wonky ratio of scripted v ad-libbed dialogue carries over into the studio-based segments. Is it funny to watch celebrities pretend to die every week? Or a self-driving car Jeremy “built” that the others are shocked to “discover” actually has an eastern European man driving it? No.

It’s frustrating, because this is such an easy show to get right. Three men, talking about cars, mocking one another, and going on adventures. That’s it. Stop scripting everything, and stop throwing money at pointless explosions. It’s tiresome.

The Grand Tour is not beyond repair, as it does get a lot right: the multinational settings work, allowing for some pleasant location-related joshing. And the car reviews are as entertaining as ever. The show just needs to embark on more make-and-make-do projects, like the amphibious cars or the rocket, without scripting the whole thing or hurling Trumpian wads of cash at it. Just allow the three men to simply talk to each other and come a cropper. This, and only this, is why people tuned in.

Will that happen? Of course it won’t. What will happen is we’ll end up watching the natural, slow death Top Gear would have had, only much more expensively: it’ll get worse, people will switch off, and it will end. Perhaps the BBC will have the last laugh after all.