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The Great Escapists is something genuinely new

Tory Belleci and Richard Hammond Expand

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Tory Belleci and Richard Hammond

Tory Belleci and Richard Hammond

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Tory Belleci and Richard Hammond

The Great Escapists is a survival series starring science fans Richard Hammond and Tory Belleci.

Two men are marooned on a desert island and have to use all their smarts to survive. No, it is not the plot of a new thriller film, but instead the concept of a brand-new docuseries on Amazon Prime.

The Great Escapists follows two of pop science TV's greatest minds - Richard Hammond and Tory Belleci - taking on the engineering challenge of their lives, as they try and invent their way off the island.

For example, in episode one - after finding themselves shipwrecked somewhere in the Pacific - we see the pair construct the mother of all shelters, and build a car out of wood. (All they have available is their bare hands and the wreckage of their boat).

"It's a big one, a noise-maker," exclaims Solihull-born Hammond (51) when asked to describe The Great Escapists.

"It's not often you get to work on something genuinely new, but this is genuinely new because it's a mash-up of pop science, engineering, survival, and drama."

As the series continues, Hammond and 50-year old US TV personality Belleci increasingly build a more and more luxurious place to live.

THE INSPIRATION

Former Top Gear host Hammond says he was "desperate to make a show in the pop-science space where you've got stuff in it, not just nonsense".

"Richard had called me maybe about three years ago and said, 'Hey, I wanna work with you' and I was like, 'Err, how do you even know who I am?!' because I was a huge fan of his and I didn't know if he knew who I was," recalls California native Belleci, laughing.

"We would go back and forth on phone calls, just pitching ideas… And then I remember Richard calling going, 'Got it! We're going to get stranded on a desert island' and I was like, 'That's genius!'"

Belleci then flew over to London, where they spent a week sitting "in a tiny little shed" with writers and producers and "banged out the whole series".

"It's been months and months and months developing this show, all of which led to us two muppets standing on a beach one day, going, 'Oh, we're really doing this now. We've got to actually make it!'" quips Hammond. SETTING THE SCENE

Discussing the beautiful location of the show, Hammond notes they had very specific requirements.

"We needed a lot of freedom, privacy, and it had to look like a desert island, which we couldn't have done if there were hotels in the background.

"It will be visually delightful on-screen and I've never seen that kind of setting in a pop-science show before. In fact, I've spent decades standing on windy airfields in the East of England.

"They are fabulous places to shoot the pop-science stuff - when you're experimenting with a rocket-powered shopping trolley or whatever - but to be standing on a tropical beach with Tory, discussing if our beer-cooling windmill is powered by pressure differentials across the blades or Newtonian laws of equal opposite forces, that's fantastic."

"The place is amazing," agrees Belleci. "Once you walk off onto the beaches there's no sign of life, the whole island was ours. It really did help us get into feeling like you're on an actual desert island. They do these crazy drone shots and there really isn't anything - all you see is vegetation."

INTENSE PROCESS

Filming the show certainly had its challenges, including the fact they were so far away from home and their families.

Everybody was being pushed because, as well as the scientific elements to the show, "it's got to look visually great, it wants some drama, it wants to look filmic", says Hammond.

As part of the concept that Hammond had imagined, there was no "straight to camera" pieces.

"He was like, 'We have to come up with ways to let the audience know what we're doing without breaking that fourth wall of like, 'We're on a show!'" explains Belleci. "It's like, 'We are not on a show, we're on a deserted island. How are we going to get these theories of engineering and science across to the audience?'"

Hammond adds: "We got on to the beach on that first moment and I thought, 'What if it's no good? What if we don't spark?' And, thankfully, after moment one I knew, 'OK it's going to be alright, we can do this together'."

The Great Escapists is on Amazon Prime Video

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