Ex Top Gear stars' new series on Amazon Prime will be 'very, very, very expensive'

(Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos says the new motoring show featuring former Top Gears stars Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will be 'very, very, very expensive. He added the trio are 'worth a lot and they know it'.

The ex Top Gear presenters are to present a new series on on Amazon's Prime streaming service from 2016, the first of three they're contracted to produce.

They departed Top Gear after Jeremy Clarkson's contract wasn't renewed following his assault on a Top Gear producer earlier this year.

Bezos told the Sunday Telegraph: "We have a lot of things in the pipeline, which I think viewers in the UK and around the world are going to love. And I think Clarkson's new show is going to be one of those.

"I think we're in a golden age of television, so if you go back in time even just five years, you couldn't get A-list talent to do TV serials, or, if you could, it was a rare thing. But that's flipped completely."

He added that serialised TV is currently enjoying "very high investment" and that this bring an increase in the "amount of time you have to tell a story".

"That format change opens up a lot of storytelling possibilities, which, when mixed with the movie-like production standards, and the A-list talent, is why we're seeing amazing television."

The new series on Amazon will be overseen by former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, who also quit the BBC following Clarkson's departure.

Wilman has said they had all agreed to a deal with Amazon because 'they'll give us the freedom to make the programme we want... There's a budget to produce programmes of the quality we want and this is the future'.

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.