- The Knowledge
- Posts
- What to watch
What to watch
š Clarksonās Farm | š¼ļø Civilisation
3 May 2024
TV
Jeremy Clarkson and Kaleb Cooper on Diddly Squat
Clarksonās Farm
A decade ago, Jeremy Clarkson was asked when he last cried. āMy name is Jeremy,ā he replied. āThat makes me a man, and that means I donāt snivel.ā But that was before his farming days, says Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. In series three of Clarksonās Farm, the former Top Gear presenter gets some adorable piglets ā and quickly learns that pig farming can be a āheartbreaking businessā. As he laments to the butcher: āAll farmers love their animals, and then they kill them.ā The pig rearing is part of a challenge Clarkson sets at the start of the series: heāll try to make money from the 500 āunfarmedā acres of his Cotswolds estate ā the woodland and hedgerows, basically ā while his trusty sidekick Kaleb Cooper takes charge of the arable land. They have 12 months to see who makes the most profit.
One of the best things about this show ā which broke Amazon Primeās viewing records last series ā is Clarksonās ācomplete lack of self-consciousnessā, says Vicky Jessop in the Evening Standard. Whether heās using a Henry the Hoover to suck blackberries off a hedgerow, or putting up a pig-pen back to front, heās āgame for pretty much anythingā. But while thereās plenty of stupidity, thereās a lot of heart, too. Clarkson and his support team ā Kaleb, girlfriend Lisa, land agent Charlie, and others ā are refreshingly honest about the challenges of farming. So yes, this is āmore of the sameā, and with another season already in the pipeline thereās more to come yet. āBut gosh dang, isnāt it enjoyable.ā
The first four episodes of Clarksonās Farm are available on Amazon Prime Video now; the remainder air on 10 May.
In case you missed it
Kenneth Clark presenting Civilisation
Civilisation
First broadcast in 1969, Kenneth Clarkās magisterial guide through Western art, architecture and philosophy is returning to the BBC for the first time in a decade. I first watched the 13-part epic during lockdown, says William Atkinson in The Spectator, and found it āthe perfect guide for a cultural noviceā. From Chartres to Constable, Bruni to Beethoven, Clarkās āsweeping grasp is as much a masterpiece as any of his chosen subjectsā. Itās a shame the BBC has placed the series on its website alongside a new segment by Mary Beard lamenting its āEuro-centrismā. Itās obviously true that a history of art that doesnāt venture south of the Pyrenees ācannot claim to be comprehensiveā, but Clark never intended to be. He was merely trying to bring āthe delights of the Western canon to the telly-watching massesā. On that metric, Civilisation was, and is, āa total triumphā.
Civilisation is available on BBC iPlayer here.
Elsewhere in The Knowledge Premium: