OUT STANDING IN HIS FIELD (CLARKSON'S FARM)

 

If someone had said to me Jeremy Clarkson would be doing a pretty good 'Good Fellas' parody this year on one of his shows, I would have laughed them out of the way.

Yet here we are with 'Clarkson's Farm' on Amazon Prime remarkably spoofing the Martin Scorsese gangster classic in its final episode and actually doing it very well.

The premise of the eight episode documentary series is pretty simple.

Former 'Top Gear,' current 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' and 'The Grand Tour' host and professional loudmouth, Jeremy Clarkson decides to try his hand at running a farm in Oxfordshire.

With the help of agronomist and land agent "Cheerful Charlie" Ireland, he plans a range of enterprises on a 1,000 acre site known as 'Diddly Squat Farm' because of the lack of activity on the site.

These enterprises range from rearing sheep, growing barley, potatoes, oil seed rape, wasabi and making honey as well as planting trees.

However he relies on a team of locals to guide him through the trials and tribulations of farm life.

These include Kaleb Cooper, a young twentysomething farm worker, who has only once been to London as a child and not really travelled beyond Banbury since.

Kaleb is also not behind the door in telling his boss he is an idiot when he makes a catastrophic mistake.

There's Gerald Cooper, a specialist in building dry stone walls with a thick West Country accent who Clarkson struggles to understand.

Local National Sheep Association chairman Kevin Harrison guides him on how to look after his flock.

Shepherdess Ellen Helliwell helps Clarkson to manage his sheep and with the lambing and shearing.

Clarkson's Irish girlfriend, the actress Lisa Hogan is also on hand to help him run the farm and staff the Diddly Squat Farm Shop.

Over the course of the eight episodes, we see Clarkson purchase an impressive Lamborghini tractor that he struggles initially to master and doesn't fit into his barn.

He buys 78 North Country Mules ewes that he cannot control and two breeding rams he christens Wayne and Leonardo - after Rooney and DiCaprio.

The Diddly Squat Farm Shop is an immediate sensation when he declares its opening on social media - only for environmental health and the local community to come down on him with regulations like a tonne of bricks.

He bottles spring water, gets stung on the arse while beekeeping and sends Kaleb off to London to sell his wasabi at the fashionable Nobu Restaurant.

There are many ups and many downs but does Clarkson make a profit in a year that is also disrupted by the global outbreak of Covid-19.

Jeremy Clarkson has always been one of those presenters I have struggled to watch.

I have always found his cockiness and his Alan Partridgesque delivery hard to listen to on Amazon's 'The Grand Tour' with James May and Richard Hammond and during their stint as the presenters on the BBC's 'Top Gear'.

And yet... somehow 'Clarkson's Farm' works.

A lot of that is down to Clarkson's willingness to send himself up and be exposed occasionally as a blunderbuss whose gambles occasionally pay off but often don't.

Some of the best moments come when Kaleb is screaming with frustration at his boss over an act of crass stupidity.

However each contributor plays their part, leaving you often with a laugh and maybe the occasional tear.

Most urban viewers of the show have probably taken the role of the farming community for granted.

'Clarkson's Farm,' however, sets out to right that wrong, doing an excellent job conveying the physical demands of each enterprise and the colossal amount of red tape that food producers have to deal with.

Intelligently packaged by director Gavin Whitehead, it educates, informs and entertains and then some.

With some breathtaking images of the English countryside over the course of a turbulent 12 months for Clarkson and a COVID ravaged society, it is easy to see why the show has become one of the most unexpected streaming hits of 2021.

And if it dispels some of the misconceptions about the farming community and deepens appreciation for them, then that is a job well done.

I can't quite believe I am saying this but roll on Season 2.

('Clarkson's Farm' was made available for streaming on Amazon Prime in the UK and Ireland on June 11, 2021)