That's as straight as a roundabout
Continuing my trip down The Guardian's Top 50 TV Shows of 2021.
#38 : Clarkson's Farm
Just when it looked as if he had ossified into an obnoxious pub bore, Jeremy Clarkson suddenly went and became charming. In Clarkson’s Farm, we saw him trying his hardest to make profit from his land, aided by employees who don’t care a jot for his celebrity. If the success of this first series doesn’t go to his head, Clarkson’s Farm will be a highly successful reinvention.
I'm not a fan of Mr Clarkson, but I had watched a couple of these and found them to be entertaining and educational - so was happy to catch up with the rest of them.
And yeah - entertaining and educational is pretty much where we are. Episode 1 does planting, episode 2 is sheep, episode 3 is the farm shop (including potatoes and chickens), episode 4 (somewhat surprisingly) does some hippy-dippy wilding (an excuse to play with a digger, if ever i saw one), episode 5 does the pandemic and (a lot of) lambing, episode 6 is hot (they're kinda dragging it out by this point), episode 7 Kaleb goes to London (oh yes - big time) and episode 8 they (finally) harvest their crops (a combine harvester is a scary looking beast and incredibly clever - looking at one of them was pretty interesting).
He's done a great job in picking a nice selection of deadpan sidekicks - Kaleb in particular is amusingly despairing of Jeremy. And he can't half drive a tractor! Gerald the dry stone waller is amusingly impossible to understand and Cheerful Charlie, the farm manager, does enjoy delivering bad news. And there's no danger of his girlfriend Lisa letting his head get too big either. I do suspect they had an army of helpers doing most of the work behind the scenes but that's fine because it enables them to cover a wider breadth of activities.
I did have to take my time over it because too much Jeremy in a short space of time started to do my head in, but he's much more bearable for me here than in other incarnations. Although part of that is that it's most enjoyable watching him get kicked in the bollocks by an angry sheep or stung on the arse by an angry bee. He does play the ignoramus more than is strictly necessary but it makes the point nicely that the whole business is waaaay more complicated, expensive and time-consuming than anyone not involved in the business is aware. WIth a very depressing outlook to boot.
Overall, I enjoyed this - it is often funny in a not too Top Gear kind of a way, charming getting to know the characters, has some beautiful scenery shots and it's very educational about farming - which is something it wouldn't hurt all of us to know a bit more about. So if you've been scared off by the presence of Jeremy then give it a go - he's honestly really not too annoying. Why, sometimes I even almost quite liked him.
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