There is still a decent chance of Jeremy Clarkson being put out to pasture following his widely condemned article about Meghan Markle in the Sun newspaper. But while ITV continues to hum and haw about his future as host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, Clarkson is ploughing onward with season two of Clarkson’s Farm for Amazon (Prime Video, streaming from today).
Series one was a bit of a Schrödinger’s smash. The wry documentary about Clarkson’s gearshift from petrol head to farmer went down a treat in Britain, leading to down-the-lane queues at Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm Shop in bucolic Oxfordshire (where a party pack of cheese-and-onion crisps will set you back €40). But internationally – in the United States, especially – it seems to have flopped like a goat’s-milk sundae, and won’t be renewed past a third run of episodes.
Clarkson is a baron of banter as he tests the patience of his sensible land agent and adviser, Charlie Ireland – he’s not Irish, though he must sometimes wish he were on a different island from the presenter
This silage mariner doesn’t seem too bothered. As the show returns, his concerns are rather grounded. With his plan to crack the wool business going sheep-shaped, he’s moved on to cattle and must acquire a breeding herd. He also hopes to convert a barn into a restaurant – though the €275,000 price tag to install a roof is a potential impediment.
The biggest headache of all, though, is Brexit. “No more EU grants or subsidies – but the British government told me not to worry,” Clarkson says with a sigh.
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Astonishingly, it turns out that he, like farmers across the UK, has a great deal to worry about. The supports promised by the Brexit cheerleaders Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have turned to smoke, leaving Clarkson out of pocket to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says of Westminster’s assurances of state backing. “It’s just a slogan.”
Clarkson is a reliably shaggy presence. There is no hint of the contrarian who in that disgraceful Sun column, which the UK press watchdog is now investigating after more than 25,000 complaints, dreamed of Meghan’s public humiliation. He is instead a baron of banter as he tests the patience of his sensible land agent and adviser, Charlie Ireland. (He’s not Irish, though he must sometimes wish he were on a different island from Clarkson.)
The ghosts of Top Gear and The Grand Tour are revived in Clarkson’s badinage with Kaleb Cooper, a millennial farming contractor who lays on the nice-but-dim act a bit. He claims not to know that 1998 was in the 20th century and is baffled when Clarkson asks him to clear a field to create a larger car park.
As with his motoring shows, the endeavour is scripted to the umpteenth degree. Clarkson obviously makes sure that he gets all the best lines. “We’ve minced a working-class child,” he says when a Burberry onesie turns up in the middle of a pile of barley. And he expresses surprise at the practice of castrating bulls. “If somebody cut my balls off I don’t think I’d be safe to handle,” he says.
Safe or not, with season two of Clarkson’s Farm he’s given fans more of what they want. He may yet become persona non grata. For now, the man in the moo is lairy lord of all he surveys.
