The BBC must be green with envy over Clarkson’s Farm
Gerald is back! The tears of Jeremy Clarkson and his partner Lisa Hogan in the early episodes of series three of Clarkson’s Farm (Amazon Prime Video) may have been over the fate of their pigs, but the real hammerblow was the news that loveable farmhand Gerald Cooper had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The second tranche of episodes is now out, and episode four finds Clarkson spotting a familiar figure doing a spot of dry stone-walling. It’s an uplifting moment. “Gerald! You’re back! You’re back!” says a clearly delighted Clarkson. Gerald explains that he’s had 37 sessions of radiotherapy, and doesn’t have the all-clear yet “but touch wood”.
There is other good news. Clarkson promised that these episodes would be less traumatic, and he’s right. Here, Clarkson is mostly raising mushrooms. He’s trying to make money from the non-arable land on his 1,000-acre farm, and a disused bunker provides ideal growing conditions for fungi. Soon he’s overrun with the stuff. Lisa has the idea of turning some into a powder to be sprinkled in tea. It’s the kind of woo-woo nonsense that boggles his mind. “How many men do you know who do that?” he splutters.
In the absence of pig-related drama, these episodes follow a familiar pattern. Clarkson or Lisa want to run with a money-making idea, advisor Charlie Ireland puts the brakes on. “Mr Rules and Regulations arrived to make his usual tiresome recommendations,” sighs Clarkson in voice-over, when Charlie points out that producing nettle soup will require someone to have an environmental health certificate. Everything goes well for a bit – making cider, raising goats, constructing a car park – until disaster strikes. The cider explodes. The goats keep kicking Clarkson in the nuts. I’ll keep shtum on the saga of the car park.
Clarkson’s Farm has done more for farming in a few episodes than Countryfile has in 30 years. He may be hamming it up for the cameras, but Clarkson shows how much hard work goes into farming, for so little financial reward. He explains clearly why culling deer is a necessity – the numbers are too high, they eat everything – and goes hunting (with pal Hugh van Cutsem, chairman of the British Deer Society). But when he does pull the trigger, the screen goes blank. “If I were to kill a deer on television, they’d go berserk,” he says of Townie viewers.
Those Townies must love it as much as the farming community, though; when the first episodes were released they topped the UK streaming chart. His BBC days may be long gone, but
Clarkson took the Reithian principles with him: here is a show that informs, educates and entertains. Anita Singh
Failure is more rewarding than success. This may not be any sort of guide to life, but it’s a helpful rule of thumb for editors working on the reams of footage captured in reality TV. Take Double the Money
(Channel 4). The idea is written on the tin. The production gives 13 pairs of contestants a wad of cash, and they are all granted the same amount of time to see if they can make twice as much.
Napoleon dubbed us a nation of shopkeepers, and so it proves for a good half of the contestants. In the first episode they have £250 and 36 hours to turn it into £500. One pair quadrupled their money, another nearly did, both flogging food or drink, while twin sisters cleaned up hosting al fresco bums and tums classes.
They’ll all doubtless go far into the competition, which continues tonight and keeps doubling the amount of money that contestants need to double. But for the opening episode, there was barely any sight of them. Much more fun was to be had at the expense of Dale and Harvey, a father and son who sought a bonding experience with a pop-up car wash.
They – as in dad Dale – made the mistake of setting up in an area with zero passing traffic. So their superhero costumes went for nothing. Harvey was soon trash-talking his father. Miraculously they scraped through.
Less lucky were Debbie and Barrie, two pensioners who tried shifting cheap sunglasses. It’s no insult to this happy pair to say that they had not an entrepreneurial bone between them.
Meanwhile, the weather stymied Paulette and her grandson, Kallum, who drove to the beach with a fail-safe business plan to sell refreshing drinks to all comers. Cue a monsoon. “If we had a sister show called Halve the Money…” said host Sue Perkins.
The presence of Perkins and the strong whiff of The Apprentice makes this far from a mould-busting reality format. But it is cheerful and quite well cast. As the money doubles, so should the fun.