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.
In July 2021, it was renewed for a second series, which premiered on 10 February 2023 and became the most-watched Prime Video original series in the UK. In October 2022, it was renewed for a third series which was released in two parts, with part one premiering on 3 May 2024 and part two on 10 May 2024. In November 2023, it was renewed for a fourth series which is set to premiere in May 2025. In November 2024, it was renewed for a fifth series.
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 a local villager until his retirement in 2019. Clarkson then decided to attempt the challenge of farming the land himself.
The farm was renamed Diddly Squat by Clarkson to indicate its lack of productivity, as "diddly squat" is slang for "the least amount" or "nothing".
On Farming Today, Clarkson said that he listens to the BBC programme's podcast. The opinions of the active farmers interviewed were favourable.
Other farmers were also reported to have shown an "overwhelmingly favourable" reaction to Clarkson's Farm. 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. Viewers have found the programme educational and entertaining, and that "they now feel much better informed about farming". The National Farmers' 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". Clarkson and his farm assistant Kaleb Cooper won the Flying the Flag for British Agriculture award at the British Farming Awards.
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". 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."
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."
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."
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…"
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.
Following the release of the show on Amazon, the show was a popular success online, being rated five stars on Google. 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.
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".
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. 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.
To address the concerns about capacity, Clarkson bought a nearby pub/restaurant on the A40 trunk road and opened this as The Farmer's Dog in 2024.
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. The first episode was ranked No. 16 across all channels. 3.8 million watched the second episode (ranked No. 27 the same week), and 3.3 million watched the third (ranked No. 40). 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
In China, the first episode of the first series has received over 5 million views on the Chinese streaming service Bilibili.