Friday, March 29, 2024

MEATY MATTERS: Clarkson’s Farm very funny and surprisingly good

Avatar photo
We bought a new TV last week because I was struggling with the subtitles and match scores on the old one, which also involved a convoluted process for streaming anything not accessed through the Sky remote. After the inevitable delay in personalising the new TV – what the hell’s our password? – we celebrated by subscribing to Amazon Prime and the first programme on the watch list was Clarkson’s Farm, an eight-part series about Jeremy Clarkson’s initially chaotic attempts to run his 1000ha property in the Cotswolds.
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Clarkson has been a frequent presence on our screens since his days as the host of Top Gear, a cult programme designed to appeal to petrol heads and people wanting to experience outrageous behaviour vicariously, especially those willing to tolerate British public school humour – having attended one such institution, it was like being back at school, but very funny all the same.

After falling out with the BBC, Clarkson and his mates defected to Amazon to produce a similar programme before he rejoined the establishment as host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

I started watching him trying to farm with an equal sense of optimistic and cringe-worthy anticipation, although buoyed by the reviews which were all positive, apart from the po-faced Guardian critic who clearly didn’t get the joke.

The first episode showed Clarkson justifying his reputation as somebody determined to ignore any advice he doesn’t like, because he rejects the used Massey Ferguson recommended by the dealer in favour of a high-tech Lamborghini tractor, which won’t fit in his barn and has a coupling device which is incompatible with all the machinery it will have to tow. Nor does it fit through the farm gates, but at least he took the advice of his adviser and bought the rest of his implements secondhand.

The programme has a number of pleasures, not least the Cotswold countryside where I grew up with its stone walls and sweeping views, but more particularly the supporting cast of characters who all know much more about farming than Jeremy ever will. His relationship with Kaleb, effectively his farm manager, is a delight.

Kaleb frequently calls Clarkson a f—ing idiot, despite the fact he is only 21 and has only been to London once, preferring to stay round Chipping Norton and Chadlington. They behave more like an old married couple than boss and worker. Then there is Gerald, the stone wall builder with an accent so broad I could only pick up one or two words in a sentence, even though I was born and lived in the Cotswolds, and Charlie, the farm advisor, who tries to keep Jeremy’s feet on the ground.

As the episodes progress through sowing crops, regenerating wetlands, buying ewes and rams, lambing during the pandemic, opening a farm shop, completing screeds of paperwork and harvesting, Clarkson finds himself listening to advice and, with encouragement from his partner Lisa and the influence of the rural environment, becomes a more likeable person.

There are many moments of pure humour, like getting his new tractor stuck in the wettest area and being towed back up the hill by Kaleb and his brother in a tractor chain, allowing the sheep to run amok on the way up the lane to a new paddock, ignoring instructions to do a three-point turn at the end of each row, thus leaving large strips of unsown paddock and trying to rebuild the stone wall after knocking it down with his tractor. All these moments are accompanied by Kaleb, Gerald and Charlie telling him in their different ways how incompetent he is.

Regeneration of suitable parts of his land to encourage flora and fauna, once he has got over excessive use of the digger and caring for his sheep flock, show Clarkson at his best. He is excited by the wildlife and genuinely attached to his sheep flock; he takes great interest in the performance of his two rams, Wayne and Leonardo, and grieves for one of the lambs that doesn’t survive and Wayne’s death from a twisted gut. This is made all the more poignant by the realisation the cost of shearing outweighs the value of the wool and the income per lamb has plunged during lockdown. But in spite of these setbacks the lambing percentage is good and he still loves having sheep on his farm.

Taken as a whole, the programme follows Clarkson’s progression from farming ignoramus with more money than common sense to a farm owner who fully appreciates the challenges facing farmers, including catastrophic weather events, paperwork and bureaucracy, market conditions and animal health issues. At the end of the year Charlie gives him the news he has made a profit of £144 before subsidies.

Provided the viewer is not irritated by Clarkson’s wealth and inflated sense of his own self-worth from previous programmes, this presents farming in an amusing, sympathetic yet realistic light, which goes some way towards encouraging townies to look favourably at the hard work involved in producing food for them to eat.

One is left with the sense Clarkson wants to carry on with his rural lifestyle, possibly because he gets more satisfaction from it than everything else he has made a fortune from. The cynic may say this is because Amazon will commission another series, but that is not yet a certainty.

If you want to enjoy an amusing and sympathetic look at a farming life, I suggest you take out your free seven-day Amazon Prime trial and watch Clarkson’s Farm.

Total
0
Shares
People are also reading