The second instalment of The Grand Tour season four is one of several TV projects to fall victim to the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, the Amazon Original has suffered a number of scheduling pushbacks, with Jeremy, Richard and James having filmed footage for the episode back in late-2019. It appears the return date isn’t too far away though as producer Andy has broken down when the show will be back.
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Andy and Jeremy were speaking during a live stream on Friday, April 24 hosted by Drive Tribe.
The pair began by explaining the exact reasons for the delay in bringing episode two to Amazon Prime subscribers.
Jeremy kicked off: “The reason I’ve got you here is because I’m being asked countless time a day why, bearing in mind we’ve all been quarantined for the last three or four weeks, why we can’t see the next instalment of The Grand Tour.
“So I thought I’d get you here and you can explain so, why can’t we watch it?”
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Andy replied: “(It’s) partly because we have been in quarantine, the world’s wheels have come off. You know, I’ve not mentioned it much but I have had the plague.”
The Grand Tour producer then revealed it was the “worst thing he’d ever had” as he discussed his 10-day recovery from COVID-19.
Jeremy then expressed his happiness at his colleague’s recovering in a relatively short amount of time before asking: “But we filmed four months ago, so why can’t we see it?”
Andy corrected the TV presenter: “Actually, six months ago! Well, even without a world pandemic it takes a long time. Part of the problem is I’m not in the edit (suite). I’ve got everything I need in the edit.”
Jeremy asked: “So you’re sitting at home and it’s slowed you down because I think … I tried to explain it to some people last week how complicated it is to edit an episode of The Grand Tour and I don’t think people get it.”
The pair went on to drop the bombshell that there are approximately 1,000 hours of footage that needed to be edited down just to make one episode.
Andy then detailed the timeline for the Madagascar episode, saying: “All that stuff that comes back, it takes five weeks for it to all go into the machines, it’s all technical s**t don’t ask me.
“It takes five weeks before the editor can even access it. Then there’s five weeks of him breaking it down, so he’s got to go through everything you lot say – and then he’s got to match up all the cameras. That’s another five weeks.”
“Until they know when they’re gonna put it out and they’ll never tell us because they know we’ve got big gobs and we’ll leak it, it’s like ask Amazon.”
Jeremy and Andy then came to an agreement that they should be done with their side of things with the next fortnight.
Then they revealed the cut would be sent to Amazon for it to decide when to release it.
However, with two weeks left for Jeremy and Andy’s process to be over and then the “five weeks with Amazon” the producer predicted, it looks likely fans could have the next episode on screens in approximately seven weeks or beyond.
The Grand Tour season 4 returns to Amazon Prime Video in 2020.