It's been one of the most hotly-bidded shows in years, but after much too'ing and fro'ing, Messrs. Clarkson, Hammond and May have finally found a home on VOD service Amazon Prime.

Amazon's answer to Netflix held off stiff competition from a few places and secured a landmark deal that will see each new episode of their as-yet-untitled show cost them £4,400,000 PER EPISODE.

Their departure from BBC following Clarkson's well-publicised troubles sparked a huge bidding war between Netflix and Amazon, which the former ultimately won. Now that the dust has settled, it would seem Netflix may have be having some sour grapes about the whole thing. In a recent interview, Netflix's Chief Product Officer, Neil Jones, spoke about their decision to pass on Not-Top Gear.

"Our buying decisions tend to be somewhat data-driven. We have a lot of data to get the deals we want," Jones explained, further stating that they "have past episodes of Top Gear, so we have a pretty good gauge of what audiences like."

Netflix are notoriously secretive about their viewership figures and almost never release them to the public. However, it is understood that Netflix uses this data to guide which shows to purchase more of and which to cut loose. We're guessing by this that Top Gear didn't rate all that highly with Netflix's users - which makes sense, really. Top Gear repeats are pretty common on regular television.

That wasn't all. Jones added a further dig at Top Gear, saying that "it wasn't worth the money to make the deal... I think they sold themselves for way more money [than they're worth]."

In a further statement, Jones backtracked his statement slightly with this: "There is an audience for everything and it is not up to us to judge if Amazon has paid too much or not."

So, what does it all mean? It's hard to imagine Netflix would have sour grapes about something like this. When you consider how successful the likes of House of Cards has been or, more recently, Narcos, it's easy to think that their position is safe and they wouldn't need to splash out on a tentpole programme like Not-Top Gear.

Plus, Top Gear is only popular on the side of the Atlantic. Considering the kind of money the trio were looking for, it's logical to assume that Netflix couldn't justify that kind of budget if it's only going to play in a relatively small market.

What do you think? Were Netflix right to pass on Clarkson, Hammond and May? Would you watch Not Top Gear or has it all run its course? Let us know in the comments.

 

Via DigitialSpy