Clarkson’s Farm

Our Review

The best thing Clarkson has ever done, and he’d probably agree through gritted teeth. The premise: he tries to run a 1,000-acre Oxfordshire farm, and it goes badly, expensively, and hilariously — but the show sneaks up on you. It starts as a comedy of an arrogant amateur getting schooled by agriculture and becomes one of the most persuasive cases for farming life ever aired: the bureaucracy (the farm-shop license saga), the weather, the thin margins, the animals (the sheep section is a war-crime comedy of errors), and the people who actually do the work.

Kaleb Cooper, the 20-something farm hand who is funnier than any scripted sidekick, is the show’s soul — his exasperated delivery of Jeremy’s name is a catchphrase born of pure despair. Charlie Ireland, the dry land agent, and Gerald the incomprehensible wall-builder complete a documentary dream team. The show has made farming compelling for a generation of viewers who’d never touched soil, and it’s the rare Clarkson project where his bombast is constantly, correctly humbled by reality.

Verdict: Watch it even if you hate Clarkson. Especially if you hate Clarkson.