REVIEW: The Great Escapists, Series 1 Episode Six 'Lift Off'

 REVIEW: The Great Escapists, Series 1 Episode Six 'Lift Off'

The Great Escapists, has, on a whole been something of a mixed series for me. When it's bad, it's really bad, but when it's good, it's a decent piece of televisual viewing. So I was curious to see where the finale to this series would land for me.

The beginning did not look too promising, as we opened to where we last left Richard Hammond and Tory Belleci at the end of the previous instalment. Richard and Tory are caught in the nets that they set up a security system in the very first episode, and have to figure a way out. Their attempts to use gravity in order to free themselves from their predicament is very silly, and it highlights one of the issues with the poor episodes of this series. It doesn't feel truly authentic to the scenarios that people who are actually trapped on a desert island would find themselves in. For a start, I highly doubt any castaways would be able to create such an elaborate security system, and even if they did it's hard to imagine any scenario where they would accidentally trap themselves in it.

Soon, however, the episode starts to improve, as we are introduced to Richard's idea of a gyrocopter. This is a really clever concept concerning a helicopter light enough to carry Richard off the island, and the sequence where Richard flies through the sky on his latest contraption is quite stunning to watch. It's actually unlike anything on either Clarkson/Hammond/May Top Gear or The Grand Tour, and the first time that this series feels like it has properly stood on its two front feet with its creations.

Unfortunately we delve back into the more infantile 'humour' with the return of Hammond TV. Hammond TV is one of my bug bears of the previous episodes in this series. These segments feel like they are trying to be clever by mimicking YouTube videos, with talks of likes and subscribes, but it just comes across as though it was written by a fifty year old writer trying to 'get down with the kids'. It's embarrassing to sit through, and I wish they had dropped this angle. The methods they utilise into creating various forms of gas is much more interesting. Particularly the way they create hydrogen by splitting water particles. It feels like one of those crazy science experiments you would witness being performed by your wacky science teacher when you were at school. All that's missing is a bunsen burner and test tubes, and it would truly evoke those madcap science lessons that we all remember from our school days.

The hydrogen, you see, is for these balloons that Richard and Tory plan to use in order to fly them both off the island in the gyrocopter. Although it's strange the amount of resources their boat had on it that they could use with the endeavours to escape the island, and it's very unclear where they get the hundreds of balloons from that they tie to the contraption at the end of the episode, the end result makes for a very cool visual, and provides one of the series' most astonishing moments. It sort of brings to mind the Disney/Pixar film Up, which famously featured a flying house made airborne through the strapping of thousands of balloons.

I just wish they had used this balloon-powered gyrocopter more. Instead the Italian police turn up and arrest them for a murder of a man they have no proof even existed (largely because he doesn't exist). I'm not even sure what the need was to go this angle; I understand that they needed to lead into the interrogation of the pair, but the explanation for why they are being interrogated makes absolutely no sense, and it would have been far more satisfying had we seen them fly the balloon-powered gryocopter.

Overall, this was an okay conclusion to The Great Escapists' first season. The gyrocopter was impressive, and the later evolution of the concept with balloons made for a truly magical visual, however the finale still contains moments that are too silly to even be considered 'funny', and the decision not to show the balloon version of the gyrocopter in flight leaves the ending is a baffling and somewhat disappointing creative choice. I hope that Clarkson's upcoming farming show provides a programme of more consistent quality, as The Great Escapists has been a little too haphazard in the standard of its output.

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What are your thoughts on The Great Escapists' sixth episode? Let me know in the comments.