Jeremy Clarkson once claimed that global warming whingers made him want ‘to shoot a polar bear in the middle of its face’.
His conversion seems about as plausible as Chris Packham commentating on F1, but he is in earnest. What an irony if Clarkson becomes the chief ambassador for back-to-nature politics – though, on the other hand, no one could have predicted before Amazon Prime launched this show in 2021 that he would be the man to make farming look fun and even cool.
Relentless drought meant his potatoes developed ‘skin set’, a condition where the tubers close up like clams. Unable to grow, they remained inedible pebbles. The sunflowers dried up, too, and the ground was too hard for planting oilseed rape for the next year’s crop. Andy Cato, the keyboard player for 1990s pop group Groove Armada, is recruited by Clarkson on the show to help revive his damaged crops
Cato made a less positive impression on the real star of the series, 25-year-old Kaleb Cooper, now the farm manager and still driving combine harvesters like they are go-karts.