The final act is a masterclass in physical comedy. To settle a bet, the trio steals a five-ton iron ore wagon from a disused mine and attempts to tow it across the ice behind their hot hatches. It is absurd. It is stupid. It is perfectly, quintessentially them .
When the final credits roll over a shot of the three cars, covered in snow and grime, parked under a blood-red Arctic sunset, you feel the weight of the era ending. The Grand Tour had many great episodes. But “A Scandi Flick” is the one that proved that even in the twilight, with the electric future bearing down, three idiots in fast hatchbacks on a frozen lake could still be the most thrilling thing on four wheels.
That moment of authentic vulnerability is the episode’s heart. The show has finally matured. It understands that the danger isn’t a scripted explosion; it’s the thin line between a frozen road and a watery grave. best episode of the grand tour
For five seasons, a series of specials, and one tearful final road trip, The Grand Tour was many things. It was a monument to excess, a travelogue of breathtaking scope, and occasionally, a frustrating reminder of three men aging in a business built for the young. But at its best, it was a perfect alchemy of automotive passion, boneheaded comedy, and genuine human pathos. And no episode distilled that alchemy more potently than Season 5’s opener: “A Scandi Flick.”
“A Scandi Flick” is the episode where The Grand Tour stopped trying to be the loudest show on television and became the warmest. It is a love letter to the rally stages of the 1990s, to the stubbornness of internal combustion, and to the kind of friendship that only survives after twenty years of being deliberately crashed into one another. The final act is a masterclass in physical comedy
But the episode’s genius lies not in the cars, but in the guest. To guide them through the frozen hellscape, they enlist rally legend Petter Solberg—a man whose manic grin and complete disregard for personal safety terrify the trio more than any cliff edge in Mozambique. Solberg isn’t a guest; he’s a force of nature. He teaches them the “Scandi Flick,” the rally technique of throwing a car sideways into a corner before the apex. Watching May’s clinical, careful brain short-circuit as Solberg screams “FOOT DOWN! FOOT DOWN!” is comedic gold.
The premise is deceptively simple. Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May reunite in the frozen fjords of Norway to celebrate the internal combustion engine before the electric apocalypse. Their weapons? Three all-wheel-drive heroes from the golden age of petrol: Clarkson in a brutally fast Audi RS4 Avant, Hammond in a rally-bred Subaru WRX STI, and May in a clinical Honda Civic Type R. It is stupid
The trio attempts to cross a frozen sea. Not a lake, but a sea—with tides, pressure ridges, and ice that groans like a dying whale. There is a moment, mid-episode, where Hammond’s Subaru breaks through a layer of slush. The camera holds on his face. It’s not the exaggerated terror of the Top Gear days. It’s a real, quiet calculation: Am I about to sink into the Arctic Ocean?