Clarkson’s Farm

[Docca]

Just finished season 3.

Probably the best television on television, although I’ve found it really difficult to watch in places. ( I’ll never watch episode 4 of this season again).

Shame it’s only 8 episodes long. Maybe that will change now he’s hung up his Grand Tour driving gloves.

I’m pretty sure there has been a discussion on this on here before but I can’t find it.

Anyway- anyone else a fan? I have a farmer friend who reckons it’s the best thing to happen to farming since tractors

[Mr. Dazzle]

Pigs.

But yes, great TV. Said it before but Clarkson is a brilliant raconteur, I'd love it if he did more documentaries. His great skill is making a story come to life.

[Slenver]

I think that Clarkson gets a lot of flak for being a boorish loudmouth, but also some credit for being a very good writer and presenter. I think he's both.

The problem with TG and, to a slighter lesser extent, the Grand Tour, is that he only showed the first side of himself, and deliberately ramped it up too. Add in the tired formats and increasing reliance on 'hilarious' staged mishaps, and they got stale.

The farm thing started off a little bit like 'Top Gear on a Farm', and had a few 'hilarious' staged mishaps that I thought was a bad sign, but I guess they listened to the feedback from people that just liked it for what it was, and they seem to have got rid of most of the nonsense and have played it (relatively) straight since the first series. And that means he can just fall back on being a good (if still very marmite) presenter.

So yes, I don't adore it or anything, but I do watch it while long-since having stopped watching three old blokes accidentally reversing cars into lampposts in foreign countries.

[Slenver]

There's also a strange irony though, in that the series has highlighted the plight of modern farming, and shown how difficult it is to make any profit... while he rakes in the millions from Amazon for doing so, and rakes in millions from (slightly odd) people who travel across the country to come and gawp at his unprofitable farm while buying 30 quid t-shirts, jars of his jam and pints of his beer.

He's making an awful lot of money from highlighting the lack of money.

It just goes to show that all these other farmers need to stop moaning and just need to make themselves extremely rich and famous first, then they too can make a TV series about their shit farms to get richer.

[MrLongbeard]

That reminds me, I need to make a start on this latest series, mostly they've been an enjoyable watch.

[Count Steer]

Haven't watched for some time but the reviews are generally positive.

It sounds like there's still some of the schtick (like 'buying' the most powerful tractor known to mankind) though ie attempting to harvest wild blackberries using a commercial harvester for commercially grown soft fruit and 'Oops' of course there's a wall in the middle of them.

It sounds a bit manufactured in places. Might dip in again though and ignore the set up bits.

[Slenver]

Haven't watched for some time but the reviews are generally positive.

It sounds like there's still some of the schtick (like 'buying' the most powerful tractor known to mankind) though ie attempting to harvest wild blackberries using a commercial harvester for commercially grown soft fruit and 'Oops' of course there's a wall in the middle of them.

It sounds a bit manufactured in places. Might dip in again though and ignore the set up bits.

It's a shame because I'm sure there are plenty of people who find those fake bits cringeworthy. For me it detracts from the enjoyment of the clearly real parts.

[Count Steer]

Haven't watched for some time but the reviews are generally positive.

It sounds like there's still some of the schtick (like 'buying' the most powerful tractor known to mankind) though ie attempting to harvest wild blackberries using a commercial harvester for commercially grown soft fruit and 'Oops' of course there's a wall in the middle of them.

It sounds a bit manufactured in places. Might dip in again though and ignore the set up bits.

It's a shame because I'm sure there are plenty of people who find those fake bits cringeworthy. For me it detracts from the enjoyment of the clearly real parts.

It's got to be better than Countryfile.

That's turned into 'Farmingfile with Adam Henson' and seems to be determined to propagate the view that farmers are all poor, downtrodden. angelic souls struggling to make minimum wage - while preserving/conserving the countryside for the enjoyment of all, generally out of the goodness of their hearts. Then topping themselves because they're underpaid and underappreciated by us and the government.

[Horse]

Pigs.

But yes, great TV. Said it before but Clarkson is a brilliant raconteur, I'd love it if he did more documentaries. His great skill is making a story come to life.

IIRC he did a set of three documentaries:
- his late father-in-law (?), how he won the MC
- a commando raid
- the guy (a telephone engineer) who built the Bletchley bombe (a giant telephone exchange)

They were superb.

[Mr. Dazzle]

He did the Brunel one for the greatest brits thing, probably the reason Brunel scored so high.

Also did the Inventions Which Changed the World and the Speed things in the 90s. Oh and that one where he drove around Europe in an E Type.

[Yambo]

Pigs.

But yes, great TV. Said it before but Clarkson is a brilliant raconteur, I'd love it if he did more documentaries. His great skill is making a story come to life.

IIRC he did a set of three documentaries:
- his late father-in-law (?), how he won the MC
- a commando raid
- the guy (a telephone engineer) who built the Bletchley bombe (a giant telephone exchange)

They were superb.

His FiL was awarded the Victoria Cross.

I haven't seen the 3rd documentary you mention but watched the other two and Clarkson's presentation wasn't bad at all. I still dislike him intensely.

[DefTrap]

Enjoyable but I'd prefer if they reduced the hammyness and faux peril even further. It's interesting enough to stand on its own two feet as a farming show without them wheeling out Gerald for 5 minutes of his made-up-nonsense-language, and some very-TG bullshit ideas as padding (hoovering blackberries and then getting the corrct machinery stuck on a wall, for example). It can easily slide down towards more of a "Gone Fishing" pace without losing anything.

[porter_jamie]

I see he knocked over a deer in one of the later episodes. I haven't seen any moaning from the Bambi lovers which surprised me. They could have shown the butchering of the carcass as that would have been quite interesting.

[DefTrap]

I see he knocked over a deer in one of the later episodes. I haven't seen any moaning from the Bambi lovers which surprised me. They could have shown the butchering of the carcass as that would have been quite interesting.

A shame as I agree that would have been quite interesting, especially as they went to some lengths to explain that it was being done for reasons of herd management rather than sport. If there was more slaughter on the tv maybe more of us would give up eating it.

[Taipan]

Watched the first series and really enjoyed it. Not got round to 2 and 3, but will at some point...

[Noggin]

I see he knocked over a deer in one of the later episodes. I haven't seen any moaning from the Bambi lovers which surprised me. They could have shown the butchering of the carcass as that would have been quite interesting.

A shame as I agree that would have been quite interesting, especially as they went to some lengths to explain that it was being done for reasons of herd management rather than sport. If there was more slaughter on the tv maybe more of us would give up eating it.

And leave more for the rest of us carnivores? Good idea

[Noggin]

That's turned into 'Farmingfile with Adam Henson' and seems to be determined to propagate the view that farmers are all poor, downtrodden. angelic souls struggling to make minimum wage - while preserving/conserving the countryside for the enjoyment of all, generally out of the goodness of their hearts. Then topping themselves because they're underpaid and underappreciated by us and the government.

Thing is that a lot of farmers are in that situation. Here as well. Hence the road blocks earlier in the year around here - in the winter when they had enough time to do it.

Farming has been ground down by the supermarkets for sure. I don't know enough about the whole thing to know the rest or much detail, but I do know that the big supermarket purchasers (and so associated suppliers/producers) push the prices down of everything to benefit the consumer; the end result being that the cheaper you get to buy milk or meat, the less the original producer is getting paid - everyone after the farmer has to make a profit and he ends up with breaking even on some products to enable that.

It does suck TBF. I didn't realise until this year that farmers here were suffering so badly as they are. Because there are generally cooperatives to enable local farmers to get together for better costs etc, I thought that they would be doing better than uk farmers. Turns out that even with that, they aren't.

In France, the industry/group of population with one of the highest (if not the highest) suicide rate is farming


My dream is to earn enough money that I can afford to buy fresh food direct from local growers and local butchers that deal direct with the farmers. Trouble is that I can't do that very often at the moment

[Count Steer]

That's turned into 'Farmingfile with Adam Henson' and seems to be determined to propagate the view that farmers are all poor, downtrodden. angelic souls struggling to make minimum wage - while preserving/conserving the countryside for the enjoyment of all, generally out of the goodness of their hearts. Then topping themselves because they're underpaid and underappreciated by us and the government.

Thing is that a lot of farmers are in that situation. Here as well. Hence the road blocks earlier in the year around here - in the winter when they had enough time to do it.

Farming has been ground down by the supermarkets for sure. I don't know enough about the whole thing to know the rest or much detail, but I do know that the big supermarket purchasers (and so associated suppliers/producers) push the prices down of everything to benefit the consumer; the end result being that the cheaper you get to buy milk or meat, the less the original producer is getting paid - everyone after the farmer has to make a profit and he ends up with breaking even on some products to enable that.

It does suck TBF. I didn't realise until this year that farmers here were suffering so badly as they are. Because there are generally cooperatives to enable local farmers to get together for better costs etc, I thought that they would be doing better than uk farmers. Turns out that even with that, they aren't.

In France, the industry/group of population with one of the highest (if not the highest) suicide rate is farming

I agree on the supermarket thing. People expect cheap food, supermarkets serve the need but expect to maintain the bottom line so they squeeze the producers.

Most farmers in the UK are tenants, you don't hear much about the landowners helping out by reducing their income either.

The government haven't helped by making a complete Horlicks of subsidies to replace the EU ones either.

The suicide rates (in the UK) need a bit of digging into. We're all told that farmers are 'one of the highest' quite frequently.

Section 6 of this https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... 2011to2015 makes interesting reading.

This bit caught my eye:

In the past, agricultural and related trades have received much attention because farmers have been found to have an elevated risk of suicide (see Kelly and Bunting, 1998 and Meltzer et al, 2008). In the most recent data, however, the risk of suicide in farmers was not statistically different from the national average. Instead, suicide was around twice the national average among gardeners.

The term 'farmers' is frequently used and it appears to be a catch-all for anyone working in agriculture. (Generally rates are highest among the poorly paid).

The other thing I noted was that rates tend to be higher than might be expected where the means are readily to hand. 'Farmers' have access to guns, folk in medicine/veterinary services/dentists etc have access to drugs.

(But I digress....as always when there's a possibility that statistics might be being used and abused).

[cheb]

I see he knocked over a deer in one of the later episodes. I haven't seen any moaning from the Bambi lovers which surprised me. They could have shown the butchering of the carcass as that would have been quite interesting.

A shame as I agree that would have been quite interesting, especially as they went to some lengths to explain that it was being done for reasons of herd management rather than sport. If there was more slaughter on the tv maybe more of us would give up eating it.

I've done my bit, I was filmed for the TV using an axe to chop the head off a duck, though they did make their excuses and leave at the crucial moment.

I'm led to believe it's on Youtube.

[Horse]

- the guy (a telephone engineer) who built the Bletchley bombe (a giant telephone exchange)

I haven't seen the 3rd

It's on YouTube

I still dislike him intensely.

Anyone who punches someone because a restaurant is closed is an @rse