The Grand Tour is Amazon's biggest hit
The British edition of Top Gear holds the record for being the most widely watched factual television program in the world. Having departed that show under a cloud, the presenting trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May had a lot to live up to with their new show on Amazon, but it turns out The Grand Tour fully met expectations, and then some.
If you’ve watched it, you’ll know it’s pretty much Top Gear with a much, much bigger budget. As it’s an Amazon Prime exclusive and currently only available in the US, UK, Germany, Austria, and Japan (officially anyway), it was never going to match Top Gear for viewing figures but it is still Amazon’s biggest hit to date.
The retail giant hasn’t released any actual viewing figures -- presumably because they’ll be much lower than most big broadcast television shows -- but it does say "The Grand Tour has become the biggest show premiere ever on Amazon Prime Video, with millions of Prime members streaming the first episode".
In addition, Amazon says The Grand Tour is "also receiving unprecedented customer and critical acclaim with the show being the top rated TV show or movie on IMDb, the world’s most popular source of movie and TV data, with an overall rating of 9.6 and over 10,000 votes. The show is rated 4.9 out of 5 stars by more than 15,000 customers on Amazon, and currently has a score of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes".
Last Friday, on the day The Grand Tour debuted, Amazon says new Prime membership sign-ups "exceeded all previous days with the exception of Prime Day", which is the day when Amazon introduces numerous exclusive offers for Prime members.
New episodes of the show are released on Fridays, and Amazon is planning a worldwide launch in December.
Did you watch the first episode, and if so, what did you think of it?