Jeremy Clarkson has ditched slightly sly Jeremy from Top Gear, the one who made lazy jokes about minorities, almost daring people to cancel him. Here, he’s your favourite uncle.
I know. Doing a review of Clarkson’s Farm (Prime Video) is a bit like asking someone if they’ve heard of this new thing called the wheel.
The show about the former Top Gear presenter trying his hand at farming in the Cotswolds is four seasons in. But this week’s column is more of a public service.
Because I didn’t realise that Clarkson’s Farm is the best family viewing… in the world. We threw on season one last week because there is nothing new worth watching in late August unless you fancy another dose of With Love, Meghan(you don’t).
Clarkson’s latest show is riveting from the get-go. Yes, it’s contrived and most of the actual farming is done by his Farm Manager, Kaleb Cooper and his Land Agent Charlie Ireland.
Kaleb is a wide-eyed English culchie who went to London once and didn’t like it. Charlie is posh and smooth, a classic gent and likeable with it. Throw in Clarkson’s Irish partner Lisa and you’ve got brilliant telly.
Better still, my kids aged 13 and 11 watch it with us every night. (Once their screen time is over on the PlayStation obviously.)
Like us, they get the immense satisfaction to be had watching a combine harvester doing its thing in a field full of barley. They like the lambs and the calves and the drama when it looks like one of those might die.
But most of all, they like Jeremy Clarkson. He has ditched slightly sly Jeremy from Top Gear, the one who made lazy jokes about minorities, almost daring people to cancel him.
He’s your favourite uncle here, bumbling, cranky at times, but well able to laugh at himself.
The episodes are as formulaic as anything you saw on Top Gear, but there was a reason that was one of the most-watched TV show around the world.
The formula here is:
- 1: Jeremy discards generations of farming knowledge to plough a field in a new way.
- 2: It doesn’t work.
- 3: Kaleb Cooper turns up to call him a prat.
- 4: Charlie Ireland turns up and agrees, he’s a prat.
- 5: Jeremy goes off to build something without planning permission.
- 6: The council tells him to stop.
- 7: Jeremy calls them prats.
They haven’t reinvented telly, but you learn something new about farming every week and there are some lovely shots of fog patches over the Cotswolds.
My kids particularly like the drywall expert called Gerald, whom no one can understand. It’s the closest thing the show gets to inappropriate. I love Gerald as well.
There are four seasons of this – get stuck in!
