It also helps that, shorn of May and Hammond, Clarkson has found the perfect foil in Kaleb Cooper, a local, no-mucking-about farm boy who speaks to Clarkson with a complete and disarming lack of awe. He is in the mud, not haw-hawing in a studio with a celebrity, and it’s quite fun to watch.Īm I allowed to say that? In the Guardian? That the new Jeremy Clarkson show is enjoyable? I have emailed ahead and apparently it’s all right, so: without the posturing and with just the right amount of glorious shots of the British countryside in summer and autumn and spring, this show really works. He installs his own electric fence and – yep, yes – electrocutes himself. He buys an overly complicated tractor that no one knows how to use. He leaves a ton of seeds by the edge of a barn and they knit themselves together like a carpet, for instance. It is a flimsy premise, sure, but the slight change in tack is actually what makes this work: after years of TV that painted Clarkson as a sort of all-knowing, jeans-and-a-blazer dad-god, he is now the blundering idiot, constantly on the back foot while surrounded by farm folk who actually know what they are doing. The only possible drawback? He’s never run a farm … in his life. This has been fine for 11 years, but now the farmer who was running it has retired … and Jeremy Clarkson’s going to run it instead. The rough idea of Clarkson’s Farm (11 June, Amazon Prime Video) is that Jeremy Clarkson – absurdly wealthy from years of writing books about how disgruntled he is, and running production companies to make shows where he drives cars around and says “Wow!” – owns a farm. For my part, I cannot deny Jeremy Clarkson has charisma, and I’m not going to pretend he doesn’t make for good TV, but I have found my patience for his “Now I’m making a joke … and you know it because I dropped my voice down” delivery has worn down to the steel.Īnyway, here he is … on a farm. Either you think he’s absolutely bloody brilliant, doing all the things provincial dads wish they could get away with but can’t (He smokes! He makes digs at Greta Thunberg! He has a girlfriend!) or you think he’s a puce, unbearable boor who is almost single-handedly responsible for the enduring car culture in this country, something we will never shake as long as we all shall live, amen. But by now, you know vaguely how you feel about Clarkson.
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