The Great Escapists

 Have you ever found yourself watching Survivor and thinking to yourself, "haven't any of these people ever heard of evaporative cooling?" If so, have I got the TV show for you.

From the moment I heard that The Grand Tour's Richard Hammond and Mythbusters' Tory Bellaci were doing a show together, I knew it was something I would probably be checking out. Now that the Amazon Prime miniseries has dropped and I've had a chance to watch all six episodes, was it worth the wait? Spoiler warning, yes.

(More spoilers follow.)

As should be fairly easy to deduce, the general premise of the show is that while on a fishing trip on the Pacific Ocean, Richard and Tory get shipwrecked and stranded on a deserted island. They then must figure out how to survive (both the island and each other) and get home. While this is a tried-and-true scenario that hearkens back to some of the great classics like Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, the two leads' background in science and engineering info-tainment gives the show a certain unique tone.

To that end, both castaways end up explaining the processes and principles behind their latest projects, either to each other or to a video diary. Taken at face value, Tory and Richard pull off some remarkable feats using the natural resources of the island and the wreckage of their boat, including waterwheel-driven electricity, fireworks, and a working gyrocopter.

Of course, the "taken at face value" bit is the rub. The show is obviously scripted to some extent - they're obviously not filming everything on their phones, and there's never any real concern expressed that they might starve, at least when they're on the island and not attempting to sail, pedal, or steam-power their way into a shipping lane. Also, their boat is curiously well-stocked with power tools and other gear that happens to be useful in their situation (though they did mention the need to conserve the electricity, at least until the point where they were making their own).  The scene where Richard is building a pineapple cannon is particularly egregious in this regard, as he just happens to have a ball valve that precisely fits both the fire extinguisher he's using as a pressure tank and the other pipe he's using as a barrel. 

And speaking of the pineapple cannon, that touches on the other issue I had with the show, namely the characterization. Now, I get that Richard and Tory are basically playing fictionalized versions of themselves, and I can even see the point in deriving tension and drama from having Tory more focused on leaving or attracting help, while Richard wants to make the best of their situation as is, and maybe recreate a few creature comforts. However, there were several points - culminating in the brief war in Episode 5 - where I thought they crossed the line into self-parody. Richard Hammond, I think, came off the worse, as his position was more easily framed as narcissistic idiocy. Really, toning things down to even Grand Tour levels would have made the whole thing much tighter.

For the best parts of the show were the sequences where Tory and Richard were really cooperating on some engineering project, like drawing electricity from yucca plants, distilling ethanol to replace there finite gasoline/petrol supply, or building a working gyrocopter. It really says something that that last sequence, despite objectively being more unbelievable, felt more real than, say, Richard building a lighthouse rotor that requires Tory to sleep in 20-minute shifts, or bringing three autobiographies of himself on a fishing trip. It would really have elevated the show from good to great if they had actually been allowed to get themselves off the island - after their Balloon-Boy experiment blew up, the next logical step was a hot-air balloon, which was completely within their capabilities.

But in the end, it really was good. The Great Escapists is, in some ways, a throwback to all the early-2000s-origin educational entertainment, not just Mythbusters and Top Gear, but also things like Junkyard Wars (which sometimes had the same issues with obviously-planted components, but still). I hadn't quite realized until I watched this show how nostalgic I could get for this sort of thing.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of room left for a second season. It would stretch the already-thin credibility to have Richard and Tory end up in a similar situation again, but maybe if they got some different people? I bet James May and Jamie Hyneman would work well together . . .