A star rating of 4 out of 5.
Jeremy Clarkson is unwell. His jolly reality doc, set on his Diddly Squat farm in Oxfordshire, returns for season 5 with the presenter/landowner in hospital, barely surviving several blockages around his heart – when he does put his waxed jacket and wellies back on, he’s under strict doctor’s orders to take it easy. No booze, no red meat and no stress or manual labour allowed.
He’s definitely not supposed to argue with right-hand man Kaleb Cooper about the correct shape of a bonfire, help a vet launch a dead sheep into the back of a Range Rover or become apoplectic at Rachel Reeves’s budget hitting farmers with extra tax. Clarkson’s Farm, however, has always been about its host doing things he’s not supposed to do, so, of course, he quickly steams into all of the above, and we’re back into the show’s normal rhythm: pratfalling ineptitude punctuated by genuine concern over the plight of the British agricultural industry.
Meanwhile at the newest Clarkson venture, his gastropub the Farmer’s Dog, sky-high water and electricity bills are just the start of the problems: the pub has become a target for thieves, vandals and disgruntled former employees.
It’s not quite more of the same, though. Clarkson, or at least the version of himself he presents in this series, has softened over time. Throw in a reminder of his mortality – a scene where he becomes breathless after rashly trying to saw down a Christmas tree unaided really does look like death is looming – and it’s time for a new Farmer Clarkson to emerge. After a trip to the Birmingham NEC to attend a machinery convention, the show looks to the future and becomes an illuminating exploration of how farming might, in the next decade or two, become more efficient and sustainable.
Episode 3 (of the four released to launch the series) is the really fascinating one, as Jeremy and Kaleb take their increasingly cute odd-couple dynamic on the road to Europe, where a Dutch potato super-farmer demonstrates how he uses drones, soil scanners and automated machinery to make huge inroads in his fertiliser and weedkiller budgets.
Then in Rotterdam, the pair are visibly stunned by a visit to a floating dairy farm that’s surrounded by solar panels, feeds its cows on grass cuttings and stale bread it purloins from the city for free, and hydrates the cattle using a desalination plant powered by the livestock’s own manure.
Back in Oxfordshire, Clarkson is soon making one of his trademark hasty purchases. The Diddly Squat fields are to be cultivated by a driverless tractor that ploughs precisely, guided by an app and a gaming controller. It’s good reality telly, with our host taking advantage of his unique position within the food production community: no other farmer can spend tens of thousands of pounds on a new piece of equipment knowing that if it looks good in their TV show the amount Amazon pay for the episode will surely more than recoup the cost.
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Elsewhere, it’s the normal mix of events that vary in how contrived they are, some of them not being for the cameras at all. Storm Darragh causes chaos, as does a group of travellers who decide to host a pony and trap-racing festival on Oxfordshire’s A-roads, using the Farmer’s Dog car park as a base. Clarkson huffs and frets like the king of the nation’s grumpy old men that he is, particularly when his partner Lisa Hogan unilaterally invests in snails (to make face cream from their slime trails) and what Clarkson deems to be the wrong type of sheep.
It’s the usual larks, then, but with a gentler edge. Fans of Top Gear back in the day would not recognise the Jeremy Clarkson seen here fighting back tears when his favourite pigs are loaded on to the truck that only does one-way journeys – but Clarkson’s Farm is healthier than ever.
Clarkson’s Farm season 5 returns to Prime Video from 3 June.
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