TV review: Clarkson's Farm is a bit tired now, but I still love it
Jeremy Clarkson on Diddly Squat Farm. Picture: Prime Video.
I cheated on my children with (Prime Video). It’s our favourite family show, they’ll be livid when they hear I watched a preview of season five without them. But they’re teenagers so there is a good chance they’ll be livid anyway.
Will they like season five? Yes they will. Jeremy Clarkson is still Jeremy Clarkson, just pared back a bit because he had a heart scare and his doctor said stop being so Jeremy Clarkson, with all the red meat, washed down with booze and stress. So instead of him doing jobs, it’s more an update on how his farm enterprise is going, between ploughing, animal husbandry, fattening sheep and running a pub.
Jeremy still gets to be 1970s bloke down the pub, saying his bull (Endgame) is like Freddie Mercury and George Michael because he it seems like he didn’t impregnate any of the cows. It isn’t funny, but you know Clarkson is only saying it to get a reaction, which is funny in its own way. (As it turns out Endgame did the business when no one was looking.)
On to the pub, where he reveals that 400 glasses a week are stolen by the punters. But that’s what you get for having one of the most famous pubs in the world.
Just as it was verging on mundane, Clarkson made me laugh out loud. To illustrate the problems he has as a landlord, he introduced the woman who runs the butcher counter in the pub, who raised a complaint after a customer told her she looks like Clarkson’s side-kick, Kaleb Cooper. Not a compliment. But the camera lingers on the woman, and she really does look a bit like Cooper. You had to be there, but it was very funny.
Then Cooper and Clarkson spend a lot of time squabbling over a bonfire. This is classic Clarkson’s Farm. If you’re a fan, it’s reassuring mood music, a bit like Last of the Summer Wine. If not, it’s two annoying guys building a bonfire.
The first episode ends with Bonfire Night, an effigy of British PM Keir Starmer on top after a series of new taxes aimed at people on the wealthy end of British farming. It’s the usual mix on Clarkson’s Farm, some messing around in diggers followed by serious bit about the realities of modern farming, topped off with nice bit of spectacle for the telly.
It’s a little bit tired now, like Clarkson after his health scare, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the last season. But I still love what it has on offer. And I’ll enjoy watching it again with my kids.
