Prime Video has confirmed that Season 3 filming has begun
It’s been 3 years since Jeremy Clarkson started on a new project generously sponsored by Amazon – a brand new TV show called “Clarkson’s Farm”. The show was released exclusively for Amazon Prime viewers back in 2021 and gained extraordinary popularity not just among the British people but also among many other English-speaking nations.
If you haven’t seen this show yet, I would highly recommend doing so unless you absolutely hate Jeremy Clarkson – although, ironically this show may offer you a pleasantly surprising new perspective! I wasn’t a Clarkson fan myself but decided to be “open-minded” and give Jezza a chance. Wow, I wasn’t disappointed!
The show grabs you from the very first minute. Everything about it is absolutely brilliant: from the beautiful Cotswold’s landscapes picked up by the superb team of cameramen and enhanced by an equally competent team of video editors to the cast of the show – Jeremy himself and people helping him on the farm on a pretty much everyday basis.
I must admit, I totally re-discovered Clarkson. He challenged my previous conceptions of his personality, and he unexpectedly appeared as a quite sensitive, soft-hearted and empathetic person who couldn’t escape the emotional connection to his farm animals and suffered every loss of them.
On the other hand, Jeremy is Jeremy. His language is spiced up but the show benefits from his unique style all the more. He is compensating for his obvious lack of farming knowledge with bags of enthusiasm and creativity. Jeremy’s famous self-confidence on a border with arrogance helps him make it through the show without the fear of looking like a fool.
Let’s be honest: no one can deny Clarkson’s been gifted with strong charisma and brilliant showman skills. And – oh! – I love his voice!
All that said above is what makes half the show’s success. The other half is undeniably down to the brilliant team of Jeremy’s companions who are charismatic in their own way: his girlfriend Lisa, charming “Cheerful Charlie”, mysterious Gerald, and of course the hilarious Kaleb (who is incredibly knowledgeable within his subject and absolutely ignorant outside of it 😀).
The idea behind the show is quite simple but brilliant: the viewer “follows” the celebrity who is a total amateur in farming and learns along the journey how incredibly hard and labour-intensive a farmer’s work is. And what’s the reward of the year’s hard work? A net annual profit of £144.
Of course, profits from farming would have never made a serious source of income for Jeremy. The real money-making machine, apart from obvious royalties, is the Diddly Squat Farm Shop which Jeremy opened throughout the first season of “Clarkson’s Farm”.
The farm shop sells the farm’s own produce plus locally sourced meat and veg, seasonal fruit and lots and lots of “Clarkson’s Farm” merchandise. Next to the farm shop is a former lambing shed which was converted into an open-air bar. Visitors can sit down for a burger of very decent quality and a pint of lager or ale from the Cotswolds-based Hawkestone Brewery.
Thanks to Jeremy’s huge popularity and an astronomic number of Twitter followers, the shop attracts endless visitors who are dying to see the film set and maybe catch a glimpse of the man himself (which is very rare). As a keepsake, fan-visitors buy the shop’s stock, ignoring the vastly inflated prices and queues to the till. One year ago the queueing time at the farm shop reached a whopping 2 hours! Today you can probably get away with just half an hour.
Some visitors expressed their disappointment in the place, but the majority forgive Jeremy these high prices, rough and ready car park and portable loos. No, of course it’s nowhere near the high level of sophistication of nearby Daylesford. But it certainly has a great vibe. I take my hat off to Jeremy: I have never seen such a massive and consistent return per one pound of investment!
If you enjoyed watching “Clarkson’s Farm” and happen to be in the Cotswolds, I would recommend you pay a visit to the farm shop (if the weather is good) and/or the burger bar.
Of course, Clarkson doesn’t represent an average farmer. He is a celebrity who has produced an educational but mainly entertaining television show. A fabulously exciting, hilarious and addictive show! My husband and I binge-watched it four times!!
Now Jeremy is about to release Season 2 of “Clarkson’s Farm” which is announced for February 2023. We are waiting in anticipation. Meanwhile, I catch myself picking up on whether farm fields have straight and even ‘’tram lines’’ – otherwise they will be the butt of jokes in the local agricultural community!
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