With the holiday season comes a lot of gifts, but for die-hard Top Gear fans, the annual Christmas special is where it’s at.
Who can forget the Vietnam Special, where presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May rode across the Southeast Asian country on creaky old scooters dressed to the nines.
Then there was Bolivia, where the boys struggled to get their cars off a raft, as well as other memorable adventures in India and the Middle East.
Top Gear’s two-part Christmas Special takes place in Patagonia, South America this year, and the BBC show has released the first trailer of the group’s 1,600-mile journey.
In the short 20-second clip, you see the May sitting still in a Lotus Esprit, Hammond’s Peugeot-badged Mustang pushing a carcass, and Clarkson predictably losing control of a Porsche 928 in the snow.
The special isn’t all fun and games though.
The oft-controversial trio found themselves in a bit of hot water during filming, when Clarkson’s Porsche was spotted featuring an ‘H982 FKL’ license plate. Critics took the plate as a reference to Argentina’s 1982 invasion of the Falkland Islands, where they eventually surrendered to the British. The crew was forced to leave the country after the scandal went public, and it will be interesting to see how the BBC portrays it on film.
As for whether or not the controversy will affect ratings, I expect to see a lot of Jeremy Clarkson’s ‘smug face’ very soon.
Part one airs December 27th, at 8:30 PM on BBC Two. The conclusion airs the following day at 8:00 PM.
