In an age where watching TV shows without being spoiled in some way is supremely rare, it was genuinely exciting to be streaming the very first episode of The Grand Tour with hardly any teasers or info about what to expect. And damn, was it good.

It's been well over a year since we saw the holy trinity (also the title of the first episode, by the way) of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May properly on our screens bickering and larking about in fast cars. And we only realised how much we missed them as the faint-inducingly expensive introduction scene kicked off.

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A cheekily happy Clarkson drives through the desert with his two mates like the end of Fast & Furious 7, and then hundreds of other vehicles join, making it look more like Mad Max than Top Gear, before arriving at a Burning Man Festival stage like they're bloody rockstars. And let's face it, in the TV world, they are.

Love them or hate them, you simply can't deny that they have this strange magical chemistry that creates brilliantly entertaining TV. It's mean to make comparisons to the new Top Gear – and impossible not to – but just five minutes of The Grand Tour was more enjoyable than the entirety of the BBC series this year.

Whether it was the macabre comical skit involving dead celebrities (including Carol Vorderman, of all people), its brand-new race track, including an apparent unexploded bomb, or its laughably cheap (considering the cost) stings for their new features (Conversation Street is our personal favourite), it was simply exactly what you want from an entertainment TV show.

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The thing with these three is that you don't need to be into cars at all to enjoy them. You might not have a clue what they're on about when they're wittering about Ferraris, Porches or McLarens, but you find yourself captivated. Conversely, you needed to be a petrolhead to fully appreciate watching their successors on Top Gear, well made as a lot of it was.

The production values on The Grand Tour are astounding. And they had to be with the sort of figures being bandied about – the intro sequence apparently cost £3 million alone. Even Jeremy's face in super 4K HD close-up looked good.

The boys seem cheekier and... perhaps happier this time around. It didn't go unnoticed that the intro featured a grim Clarkson leaving rainy London for the sunny climate of Los Angeles to the tune of 'I Can See Clearly Now'. Even the studio segments weren't lame. That whole skit with the fast edits – and being beaten up by the audience – was laugh-out-loud hilarious.

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Yes, The Grand Tour is bombastic and silly. Yes, a lot of it is (knowingly) a rip-off of Top Gear (Jeremy even said "meanwhile..."), but that's exactly what we wanted.

It's all the things we loved about their old show, but bigger, brighter and more blow-upier. They've somehow come up with the world's first scripted comedy factual show, and it works perfectly.

Who would have thought that punching someone over a tray of cold meats would have been the best thing that could have happened to TV in years?

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