The Grand Tour beaten to ‘Most Streamed’ show in the UK by Friends

The Grand Tour – the Amazon take on BBC’s Top Gear – is now only the second most streamed show in the UK, beaten to the top spot by the 24-year old Friends.

There is no doubt that when Amazon launched The Grand Tour – after Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May left Top Gear – it did wonders for the Amazon Prime audience.

As many as half of all new subscribers to Amazon Prime did so simply to watch The Grand Tour, and when the first series started in December 2016, some 29 per cent of Amazon’s subscribers tuned in.

That fell to 22 per cent for the second series of the Grand Tour in 2017, but they are still big numbers, and we’re yet to see what the audience reaction will be to the third series expected before the end of the year.

But big audience or not, there are only the two series of The Grand Tour available, so the revelation from Ofcom’s Media Nations report that The Grand Tour has been beaten soundly in to second place in the streaming audience by Friends should be no big surprise.

With a total of 236 episodes, filmed over a ten year period, Friends has ten times as many episodes to air, so the fact its total audience in Q1 2018 was twice that of the ‘New’ Top Gear should be no surprise.

All of which suggests Amazon has done really rather well out of the shed load of cash they’ve thrown at Top Gear’s former hosts.