'The Great Escapists' Trailer: 'Lord Of The Flies' Meets 'Mythbusters' In New Amazon Series
What if you combined Lord of the Flies with Mythbusters? You might get The Great Escapists, a new Amazon show that strands The Grand Tour's Richard Hammond and Mythbusters' Tory Belleci on a desert island and lets them run wild. The pair use their know-how to construct all sorts of wacky, potentially dangerous inventions, all in the name of survival – and of course, escape. Watch The Great Escapists trailer below.
The Great Escapists Trailer
Is this...a reality show? The answer appears to be "yes," but boy oh boy does a lot of the stuff on display in this trailer look staged. In The Great Escapists, "two of pop-science TV's greatest minds" – Richard Hammond (The Grand Tour) and Tory Belleci (Mythbusters) – are shipwrecked together on a desert island "with nothing but their smarts and their scrap shipwreck for survival. Can they invent themselves off the island? Or will they be castaway forever? This is the engineering challenge of their lives, will they succeed and become The Great Escapists?"
Really, though, this show looks like an excuse to see these two guys build all sorts of wacky stuff and blow things up. When the show was announced last year, Variety reported: "Each episode will see them take on huge feats of engineering to achieve epic builds, ranging from island hopping vehicles to a supersized hydro-power waterwheel."
"Somebody needs to take hold of Popular Science as a genre and reinvent it for a new age. And there are only two people to do that job. Unfortunately, neither of them are available so it's me and Tory Belleci," Richard Hammond said. "Working with Amazon, who have demonstrated their faith in us by commissioning this hugely ambitious show, we shall create something genuinely fresh and new on a scale of greatness never before seen. There's every chance that both Tory and I shall make it back from the island alive and sane...Probably."
Tory Belleci said: "I'm so excited to be working with Richard for the first time. This is gonna get crazy!" And Amazon Originals director Georgia Brown added: "This show is all about going to the extremes to pull off the impossible. And with this outstanding duo at the helm, I can't wait to see what lengths they will go to in order to create a series that is sure to stun and delight our viewers across the globe."
The Great Escapists launches on Amazon Prime Video on January 29.