Donald Clarke: Clarkson’s Farm deserves more than grudging respect
Clarkson’s Farm has become Amazon's undisputed flagship, even more popular than The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power in the UK. Photograph: Amazon Prime Video
Clarkson’s misdeeds are well documented. On the BBC’s Top Gear, he joked about lorry drivers murdering sex workers, made dubious remarks concerning various nationalities and slung around gay slurs . He was famously removed from the programme after, a producer, over a row about the non-availability of hot food.
The concept is all in the two-word title. In episode one, first broadcast a little over three years ago, the presenter explains he is setting out to run a 1,000-acre farm near the notoriously media-infested town of Chipping Norton. Clarkson is honest about the fact that, unlike most other farmers, he is cushioned by a fortune made in broadcasting. No grown-up will believe him to be in the same sort of financial peril that visits his neighbours when their crops fail or their animals perish.
The world knows the presenter too well to believe in any Damascene conversion. But, though Clarkson’s Farm does have its Top Gear moments – a hovercraft appears for no good reason in series three – it is genuinely trying to connect with the harsh realities of agriculture in the 21st century. The scourge of the green movement even finds himself railing against climate change.
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