Clarkson’s Farm (Amazon Prime Video)
Rating: One out of five stars
Think you’re stressed, Jeremy? What about the farmers doing it for real…
Jeremy Clarkson is stressed out. The pressures of running a farm and a pub, and coping with everything from dead sheep to petty thieves, have left him on the verge of a heart attack.
Well, that’s his excuse. He spent the whole of the first episode, as Clarkson’s Farm returned, clutching his chest whenever the gods of agriculture failed to smile on him, and telling everyone he met what a narrow brush he’d had with death.
By his own admission, though, Diddly Squat is a ‘hobby farm’. If he’s overwhelmed by the stress of that, while being landlord of a thriving pub that’s rammed to the rafters with customers every day of the week, how do other people cope?
The farmers with second mortgages who face bankruptcy if their crops are washed out?
Jeremy Clarkson is stressed out. The pressures of running a farm and a pub, and coping with every-thing from dead sheep to petty thieves, have left him on the verge of a heart attack
Well, that’s his excuse. He spent the whole of the first episode, as Clarkson’s Farm returned, clutching his chest whenever the gods of agriculture failed to smile on him, and telling everyone he met what a narrow brush he’d had with death
The landlords plunged into debt by soaring national insurance and rateable values? How about them, the ones doing it for real — how come they’re not all dead from stress?
I grew fed up quite quickly of Jezza’s pitiful whingeing about hospital dashes and his ‘dicky ticker’. Even his girlfriend Lisa told him to stop being ‘a petulant little child’.
The blunt truth is, he’s a porker. He looks like he’s swallowed a barrel of whisky, cask and all. When he prises himself out of a Range Rover, there should be a vet on hand with forceps in case he breeches. Small wonder his heart is straining.
No longer capable of anything more energetic than an amble, he leaves the running around to his lieutenant, Kaleb Cooper. What began as a show full of gusto and slapstick has become mired welly-deep.
It’s slow, dull, repetitive and bereft of inspiration.
A long segment of the first episode charts the building of a bonfire for November 5.
Nothing goes wrong, there’s no great drama, except that one night a disgruntled employee sets it ablaze.
The only thing less exciting than the sight of Clarkson building a bonfire is Clarkson rebuilding a bonfire. He even takes the opportunity of explaining the history of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to Kaleb, who obligingly pretends never to have heard of Guy Fawkes.
That’s a thrill a minute, compared to the spectacle of F1 driver Oscar Piastri learning how to reverse a tractor and trailer into a barn. This takes so long that even Clarkson gets bored and wanders off, taking the crew with him, so that we never do find out if Oscar gets the hang of it.
It’s vaguely interesting to know that visitors to The Farmer’s Dog nick 400 pint glasses a week. And there’s a lovely shot of a barn owl at dawn in episode two.
But why Clarkson insisted on showing us an autopsy of a gangrenous sheep, I cannot fathom. Perhaps, now that he can’t eat red meat himself, he wants everyone to go veggie.
