Clarkson's Farm

Clarkson's Farm is a British television documentary series about Jeremy Clarkson and his farm in the Cotswolds. The series documents Clarkson's attempts at running a 1,000-acre (400 ha) farm near Chipping Norton in West Oxfordshire. Described by Clarkson as "genuine reality television", the series has received positive reviews and has been praised for raising public awareness of the British farming industry on the international stage. The first series premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 11 June 2021.^[2]

Clarkson's Farm
Genre	Documentary Reality television[1]
Directed by	Gavin Whitehead
Starring	Jeremy Clarkson Kaleb Cooper Lisa Hogan Charlie Ireland Gerald Cooper Kevin Harrison Ellen Helliwell Alan Townsend Dilwyn Evans Andy Cato
Narrated by	Jeremy Clarkson
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language	English
No. of series	3
No. of episodes	24 (list of episodes)
Production
Running time	40–60 minutes
Production companies	Expectation Entertainment Con Dao Productions Amazon Studios
Original release
Network	Amazon Prime Video
Release	11 June 2021 – present

In July 2021, it was renewed for a second series,^[3] which premiered on 10 February 2023^[4] and became the most-watched Prime Video original series in the UK.^[5] In October 2022, it was renewed for a third series^[6] which was released in two parts, with part one premiering on 3 May 2024 and part two on 10 May 2024.^[7] In November 2023, it was renewed for a fourth series.^[8]

The farm was formerly part of the Sarsden estate in Oxfordshire. Jeremy Clarkson bought about a thousand acres (400 ha) in 2008, including Curdle Hill Farm. The fields were mostly arable, growing a rotation of barley, rapeseed and wheat. These were farmed on a contract basis by local villager Howard Pauling until his retirement in 2019. Clarkson then decided to attempt the challenge of farming the land himself.^[9]

The farm was renamed Diddly Squat by Clarkson to indicate its lack of productivity,^[9] as "diddly squat" is slang for "the least amount" or "nothing".^[10][11]

• Jeremy Clarkson: a motoring journalist, television presenter and author who became famous as the host of Top Gear and later on The Grand Tour.^[12] He is the owner of the newly renamed Diddly Squat Farm.
• Kaleb Cooper: a young farm worker born in Chipping Norton in 1998. Cooper farms on his own account in Heythrop, but was engaged by Clarkson to assist him.^[13] He has previous experience working on Clarkson's farm before Clarkson took over as the owner.^[14] He mainly advises Clarkson on the technical details of using farming equipment and helps with numerous general tasks. He has rarely left the village of Chadlington and its surrounding areas, with the furthest place he regularly travels to being Banbury and has never travelled abroad. He has two children with his fiancée.^[15]
• Lisa Hogan: a former actress and Clarkson's girlfriend who assists with the farm and runs the farm shop.
• Charlie Ireland: sarcastically referred to by Clarkson as "Cheerful Charlie", Ireland is a professional agronomist and land agent who advises Clarkson on farm management. He understands the agricultural aspects of the crops, the complex details of government regulation and the financial consequences. Rachael Sigee, writing for the i newspaper, described him as "chronically sensible … a stickler for the rules who delivers increasingly bad news with the politely firm manners of a parish vicar."^[16]
• Gerald Cooper: the farm's "head of security" and a specialist in the construction and maintenance of dry stone walls, which form 40 miles of boundaries on the farm. His conversations with Clarkson are amiable but often incomprehensible due to his strong West Country accent.^[15] He helps Clarkson harvest the farm's grain, which he has been doing for over fifty years. He is not related to Kaleb Cooper. During the third series, he is diagnosed with prostate cancer and takes a leave of absence from working on the farm.^[17]
• Kevin Harrison (series 1): the chairman of the National Sheep Association and a veteran sheep farmer who advises Clarkson on purchasing and later tending to his flock of North Country Mule sheep.^[18]
• Ellen Helliwell (series 1): a shepherdess who Clarkson hires to tend his flock of sheep which he acquired to graze his set-aside meadows. Her duties also include lambing and shearing.
• Alan Townsend (series 2–3; guest series 1): the head builder for various projects on the farm including the farm shop, barns for the farm animals, and the farm restaurant.
• Dilwyn Evans (series 2; guest series 1, 3): a local veterinarian who helps care for the farm's flock of sheep and later its cows and pigs. He performs various tasks including checking the animals for diseases and assisting with the birth of calves.
• Andy Cato (series 3): one-half of the electronic music duo Groove Armada and an organic crop farmer who convinces Clarkson to convert one of his fields for regenerative farming.

• Georgia Craig (series 1–2): a policy advisor from the National Farmer's Union who advises Clarkson.
• Jenny Ryan (series 1, 3): a vet who inspects Clarkson's sheep for potential breeding and later helps care for his pregnant Oxford Sandy and Black pigs.
• Thomas Haynes: an environmental compliance inspector who investigates the farm's woodland areas and advises Clarkson to prevent him from breaking environmental laws.
• Viktor Zaichenko: a Ukrainian beekeeper who sells honey bees to Clarkson and helps manage the farm's apiary.
• Simon Strong: a neighbouring grain farmer who rents a combine harvester to Clarkson for harvesting grain.
• Tim and Katy Coles (series 2–3): local cow farmers who sell heifers and beef cattle to Clarkson and later rent him a bull.
• Paddy and Steph Bourn (series 2): local egg farmers known as "Mr and Mrs Cacklebean" who sell chickens and chicken coops to Clarkson.
• Emma Ledbury (series 2): a local dairy farmer who lost half her herd of dairy cattle to bovine tuberculosis and provides the farm shop with milk products.
• Richard Keene (series 2–3): a local brewer and owner of Cotswold Brewing Co. who create Clarkson's Hawkstone Lager and Kaleb's Hawkstone Cider.
• Pip Lacey (series 2): a professional chef hired to run the farm restaurant.
• George Lamb (series 3): a radio and television presenter and Andy's business partner.
• Annie Gray (series 3): the owner of a catering van that replaces the farm restaurant.
• Rupert Arneil (series 3): a local arborist who helps Clarkson save a toppled willow tree.
• Lucca Allen (series 3): an Irish racing driver and cook who works at the farm shop and helps Clarkson with the production of nettle soup.
• Rafe Williams and Oscar Clutterbuck-Jones (series 3): a pair of mushroom farmers who sell Clarkson growbags to cultivate grey oyster, speckled chestnut and lion's mane mushrooms.
• Lizzie Dyer (series 3): a goat farmer who sells baby goats ("kids") to Clarkson.
• Rishi Sunak (series 3; uncredited): the 57th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who meets with Kaleb and Charlie at 10 Downing Street.
• Hugh van Cutsem (series 3): the chairman of the British Deer Society who helps Clarkson cull the local deer population on his farmland.

On Farming Today, Clarkson said that he listens to the BBC programme's podcast. The opinions of the active farmers interviewed were favourable.^[19]

I thought it was remarkably good and entertaining. … Many farmers will think that this is putting them and their experience over in a positive way … There were some proper laugh-out-loud moments … I am so inspired by the way that Jeremy Clarkson has talked about the industry and the people who have helped him …^[19]

Other farmers were also reported to have shown an "overwhelmingly favourable" reaction to Clarkson's Farm.^[20] The sheep farmer James Rebanks said that the farming community "all loved that programme", and that Clarkson had done more for farming in one series than 30 years of the BBC's long-running farming programme Countryfile.^[21] Viewers have found the programme educational and entertaining, and that "they now feel much better informed about farming".^[22] The National Farmer's Union awarded Clarkson 2021 Farming Champion of the Year as "a vocal champion for the British farming industry", and producing that year a show that showcased the realities of farming and one that "has really resonated with the public".^[23] Clarkson and his farm assistant Kaleb Cooper won the Flying the Flag for British Agriculture award at the British Farming Awards.^[24]

Joel Golby, reviewing for The Guardian, found Clarkson's verbal signalling of his jokes by lowering his voice tiring, but the format, in which his blunders are corrected by no-nonsense country folk, works well, "It's simply, just … really good TV".^[12] Lucy Mangan wrote a different review for The Guardian a week later, but only gave it one star out of five. She was tired by Clarkson's role as an ignorant buffoon and called the show "wearisome, meretricious rubbish … The series amounts to less and less as time goes on."^[25]

Anita Singh reviewed the show for The Daily Telegraph. She liked the apparent authenticity of Clarkson's involvement in the farming, "…when you see Clarkson despairing at his crop failures, or yelping with delight when he helps to deliver a lamb, it feels genuine." She liked the supporting players, such as Kaleb and Charlie, and that "Clarkson’s gone soft, and it makes for surprisingly good viewing."^[26]

Suzi Feay gave the show five stars in the Financial Times. She especially liked "…some of rural England’s more surprising characters … Clarkson’s Farm features some unique types that are rarely spotted on screen."^[15]

Hugo Rifkind, reviewing for The Times, likes Clarkson's "honesty of self" and appreciated both the good fun and the increasingly earnest engagement, "…you get to watch a familiar face grow smitten with his new life, coming to understand the responsibility of feeding Britain … a quite lovely documentary series about life on a farm…"^[27]

Marty Meany reviewed Clarkson's Farm for Goosed.ie, describing Jeremy as a "grown man playing Farming Simulator in real life", but whether you "love him or hate him, Clarkson's Farm sees Jeremy return to his very best" after years of creating "blatantly scripted" television. Meany gave the show four and a half stars in his review.^[28]

Following the release of the show on Amazon, the show was a popular success online, being rated five stars on Google.^[29] The show was also well-received on the Chinese website Douban from nearly 80,000 Chinese people, who awarded it a rating 9.6 out of 10 for the first series.^[30][31]

The popularity of Clarkson's Farm led to large number of visitors to the farm shop opened by Clarkson, which resulted in a 3-mile-long (4.8 km) traffic jam and necessitated the attendance of the police to handle the disruption in traffic. As a result, Clarkson faced a strong backlash from the people of Chadlington. Later that day he took to Twitter, writing: "People of Chadlington. I’m truly sorry about the traffic around our farm shop last weekend. We are doing everything we can to improve the situation".^[32][33]

The West Oxfordshire District Council blocked attempts by Clarkson to build a car park, a restaurant and the building of a road to another restaurant he opened. The restaurant in a converted barn was forced to close and the planting of trees to screen a car park was denied.^[34] The dispute between Clarkson and West Oxfordshire District Council was said to have led to a change in planning regulation, which is dubbed "Clarkson's clause" and it allows farmers to convert disused agricultural buildings for commercial and residential use without planning permission.^[35]

According to Barb, the first episode of the second series of Clarkson's Farm broke viewing record on Amazon in the UK and became the most watched original series on Amazon. It was watched by 4.3 million viewers on TV in seven days, with more UK viewers watching the episode than The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which had 3.2 million viewers for its first episode in 2022.^[36] The first episode was ranked No. 16 across all channels.^[37] 3.8 million watched the second episode (ranked No. 27 the same week), and 3.3 million watched the third (ranked No. 40).^[37][5] A total of 7.6 million individuals had watched the show across its eight episodes over 28 days, which made it the most-watched show on Amazon Prime in the UK.^[38]

The ratings for the first series were not available since Barb only started measuring viewership for on-demand video platforms such as Amazon in November 2021.^[39]

The viewing figures of the third series improved on those of the second series the UK when the first four episodes were released on 3 May 2024. Overnight viewing figures showed 3.7 million watched the first episode, 3.1 million the second, 2.5 million the third and 2.1 million the fourth.^[40] Viewing figures over 7 days showed that the first episode was streamed by 5.1 million television viewers (5.2 million including mobile devices), which made it the most-streamed show on Amazon Prime in the UK, and the second most-streamed show of 2024 on any streaming service in the UK after Fool Me Once on Netflix.^[41] The second episode was watched by 4.7 million viewers, the third 4.3 million and the fourth 3.9 million, making the first four episodes the 4th, 6th, 11th and 14th most-watched TV shows of the week in the UK.^[42]

In China, the first episode of the first series has received over 5 million views on the Chinese streaming service Bilibili.^[30][43]

• Official website
• Clarkson's Farm at IMDb