Things The Grand Tour Cannot Do In Fear Of Being Sued By The BBC

by Hansen 24 August, 2016, 8:18 pm 471 Views 3 Comments

Andy Wilman has been on our radar for the last couple of days, whether in discussion of Richard Hammond’s almost getting fired from Top Gear after the second series, or elaborating on the office politics behind Jeremy Clarkson’s firing. Now he has shared a the insanity behind the hurdles The Grand Tour will have to jump through in fear of being sued by the BBC.

Here are some of the things The Grand Tour CANNOT do according to Wilman:

It cannot have a Test Track. Top Gear has a test track in Dunsfold Aerodrome where countless vehicles and Stars in Reasonably Priced cars, and Formula 1 drivers have blasted around. The new show will not be allowed to have a test track in fear of infringing on the old show’s intellectual property.
It cannot have The Stig. It was Top Gear’s, so we’re guessing The Grand Tour will get one of Stig’s cousins to do their dirty work.
It cannot call the News segment of The Grand Tour “The News”
They cannot say “This scenery is beautiful.” According to Wilman:

“We went to Namibia to make a big film. The lawyers got out a film we had done [for Top Gear] in Botswana. The lawyers go through everything and they said, ‘There’s a scene in [Top Gear] where you’re in the middle of the Okavango and you go, “This scenery is beautiful”, so watch that you don’t do that.’

So we were in the desert in Namibia and we had to go, “for legal reasons, this scenery is shit’.”

It cannot have a handwritten Leaderboard time:

“There’s [a leaderboard], but we can’t have handwritten stuff, that’s all got to change for the lawyers. We still test cars and stuff though.”

There might be many more to what they can and cannot say, but if we know Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May, and Andy Wilman, we’re quite certain they will make this a source of entertainment rather than a hurdle. The Grand Tour will be available on Amazon Prime’s streaming service starting in Fall 2016. To get more details about the show and how you can watch it, click here.

(Source: Telegraph)