THE Grand Tour’s Russian special will be scrapped in favour of a “tough” road trip in the “depths of winter”, show bosses have confirmed.
Amazon Prime hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May will switch eastern Europe for an adventure in Scandinavia’s Arctic Circle – with their original plans shelved due to the pandemic.
In a chat with Metro.co.uk, The Grand Tour boss Andy Wilman told how the production team were “bolting all the bits together” to make it happen for the ex Top Gear presenters.
He confirmed of the hugely-anticipated telly special: “It would be back to being a proper road trip, but it will be across the Arctic Circle and it will be tough – at least I hope we will be tough because we’ll be going in the depths of winter.”
Addressing the Russia trip, he added: “We’re not going to try that one again. Because for the next foreign special we want to go into the snow.
“So we want to go up into Scandinavia to do that.
“There’d be no room for the Russian one as well, because that was all about snow and being in that environment.
“We have to plan five or six months ahead. And right now with Norway, Sweden and Finland, we can plan what the entry requirements are.
“We know what they want Covid wise.
“So if we do Scandinavia, I don’t see us going back to Russia for what we planned.”
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The Grand Tour’s first UK special was held in Scotland – with hilarious special deleted scenes then released after it was aired.
The Celeb Report Online then exclusively confirmed the series’ second special on home turf would take place in Wales.
Andy revealed to us: “We shot another one in Wales, which will keep the wheels turning for a while.”
He then candidly addressed the issues of filming in a pandemic and added: “We are planning but a country can go on the red list at short notice, so at the minute we don’t know where we’re going.
“But we want to shoot one in the Autumn and one in February because if we don’t we’re not producing any content.”
It appears the Arctic Circle episodes will be lined up for this year’s filming.
Yet with the UK Government’s new rule on travel and entry into the country amid the omicron strain of coronavirus, the Scandinavian adventure may now be under threat.
