Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Great Escapists’ On Amazon Prime Video, Where Richard Hammond And Tory Belleci Use Their Know-How On A Deserted Island

Shows like Mythbusters and The Grand Tour are a bit of a hybrid between unscripted reality and semi-scripted “infocom”, where information on science and engineering is ensconced in cast banter and other prepared moments. A new series on Prime Video, The Great Escapists, happens to take that to the next degree. And it also has hosts from both The Grand Tour and Mythbusters.

THE GREAT ESCAPISTS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Richard Hammond is shown lying on a beach, as if he’s swum up from a shipwreck.

The Gist: The idea of The Great Escapists is that Hammond, of The Grand Tour, Top Gear and other shows, gets shipwrecked when he and Mythbusters host Tory Belleci go on a fishing trip together. They use their collective know-how to both try to get off the island as well as make lives better for themselves while they’re there.

In the first episode, the guys try to get the lay of the land after washing ashore, as we hear the two of them recounting the adventure to some unknown “authorities” in a rundown interrogation room. Hammond plays his usual hammy “I’m TV’s Richard Hammond!” role, more interested in speed than in performance; he also seems to be A-OK with taking his time trying to get off this tropical island. Belleci tries an SOS fire, a message in a bottle, and other ways to let people know they’re there.

After holing up in some shipping containers during another storm, the pair find their ship, which has come ashore but is split in half. So they salvage whatever they can from it, but to haul it back to camp they’ll need a vehicle. So Hammond sets out to build a car from the ship’s parts, but he sacrifices power for speed and precise steering. Belleci, finally resigned that they’re going to be there awhile, builds his own “screw tank,” which is much more powerful — and also moves sideways. The two ever-competitive friends have a race, which the tank wins, then a cargo-dragging race, which the tank also wins.

They then find that an intruder has ransacked their camp; the two build a treehouse, which Hammond outfits complete with a trap and an air siren.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? If you mixed Top Gear and Mythbusters with Gilligan’s Island, you’d get this show.

Our Take: The Great Escapists is, to put it mildly, an odd show. It’s kind of scripted, kind of improvised. It’s kind of a reality sitcom, a format both hosts are used to, where banter is planned and situations are written. The two of them aren’t building the projects they build, at least not by themselves, so the idea that they’re creating these engineering marvels themselves is a lark.

All of that would be fine — The Grand Tour, for instance, isn’t exactly a fly-on-the-wall kind of reality show — but the show is trying to get the audience to commit to a lot of buy-ins in order to make it work. You have to buy into the fact that these two blokes are stranded on a remote island, with only their know-how to help them survive and thrive. Then you have to buy in that all of the things they built were just things that came off the tops of their heads. Then you have to ignore the fact that there are camera operators, sound operators, technical consultants and other crew just off-camera.

The silliness of the show’s premise would be OK, though, if we got a bit more of a glimpse into the science and engineering behind the stuff they’re building. There’s some tidbits here and there, like how the triangles on the frame of Hammond’s car help strengthen it, or how helixes work in the screw tank, but the science and engineering aspect of the show is reduced in favor of semi-scripted schtick.

That schitck doesn’t land most of the time. There are a few funny moments, mainly thanks to Hammond skewering his image and making a weathered soccer ball into a “companion” named Clarkson (in honor of Grand Tour frenemy Jeremy Clarkson). But a pointless race between the vehicles takes far too long when the answer to which one will be used to pull cargo seems obvious, and the treehouse-building segment seems tacked on. In short, we know that they’re not stranded and we know that they’re not building this stuff on their own. So why go through the machinations?

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: Late at night, the trap is sprung. The two scramble around. “Hand me that oar!” yells Belleci. “That’s not an oar!” yells back Hammond.

Sleeper Star: The technical advisors that helped build the cars and treehouse are the real stars on this show; these designs are not just genius, but pretty cool to look at, too.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not really sure what the “interrogation” scenes are for. Yes, it’s a way to couch the story and make each of them sound like the hero of the story, but… to what end?

Our Call: SKIP IT. As cool as some of the machines Hammond and Belleci create (or are depicted creating), six episodes of their schtick on The Great Escapists feels like a lot. This would have made more sense as a 90-minute special, and we’re not even sure that would have worked, either.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream The Great Escapists On Prime Video