Clarkson’s Farm was never meant to be sad. It became a hit because it was pure, comfort-watch TV. There was the schadenfreude of seeing Jeremy Clarkson’s face when he realised a hog had been sick in the pocket of his Barbour jacket. The way the show somehow made interminable scenes of tractor showrooms and rain-sodden fields not just watchable, but entertaining. And if there were ever teary moments, it was when the team was forced to wave goodbye to a particularly cute, but financially unviable, set of pigs (there was a genuinely moving slow-motion montage to see them off to the slaughterhouse). But the final episodes of season five have changed all that, with Clarkson’s solemn announcement that he has cancer.
The moment arrives in episode seven, when Clarkson sits down with his farmhand – and de facto son – Kaleb, and land agent Charlie, to talk about dates for the 2025 harvest season. Gone is the pomposity and blokeish banter, and instead we see Clarkson’s lips tremble as he breaks the news he’s been sitting on for weeks. Kaleb, stunned and unable to reach for his usual quip, wipes his eyes. The camera is unflinching as it captures the scene, and it will strike a chord with anyone who has had to share difficult news with the people they love. He doesn’t share details at first, but later we discover it’s prostate cancer. They’ve caught it early and it can be operated on.
It’s a sharp plunge in atmosphere for a show that, even across these two episodes, is full of the kind of wholesome, amusing, low-stakes dramas of farming life that have made the series so successful. Episode seven, titled “Sickening”, opens typically, with scenes of onions and beetroots being planted, and Clarkson whining about the weather. There are shots of lambs leaping into the long grass. “That is gorgeous,” declares Clarkson’s girlfriend Lisa. Clarkson drinks beer and listens to birdsong at sunset with conservationist Hannah. There are gaggles of mischievous geese. They get shocks as they try to breach electric fences. “Ah, poor geese!” cries Clarkson, who has definitely gone soft since his more troubling, testosterone-charged Top Gear days.
But, unlike the first four seasons, the thread running through it all is now more poignant, one of worry and sadness. Across the two final episodes, the storyline of Clarkson’s wavering health, and his anxious wait for blood tests, is mirrored by the narrative of a cow, five months pregnant with twin calves, who is sent to slaughter because she might have TB – the tests are inconclusive.
When Clarkson is off screen, as he has to be in these episodes, the show suffers. If anyone was in any doubt, it only serves to further prove how Clarkson’s Farm is really not about farming at its heart – it’s about him. In episode eight, there’s a period of absence when he goes off for his prostate operation, and Lisa is trained up to help Kaleb harvest barley on the farm. “Lisa is doing amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I’m missing Jeremy’s voice over the radio,” says Kaleb, as he rolls along in his tractor. “It’s going to sound really soppy and everything, but I don’t miss his skill, I miss him as a friend being here, doing it together. This is our thing.”
When Clarkson returns post-op, wincing as he is thrown around in his tractor seat, he jokes he has been made “completely redundant” by Lisa, who proves to be a natural out in the fields. But the truth is, he is the show. Perhaps that’s why he’s chosen to disclose his cancer on the series, rather than on social media or through his newspaper column.
As the finale draws to a close, Clarkson admits it has been an annus horribilis on the farm. He started the season with coronary heart disease, and ended it with cancer. “In between,” he grumbles, “we’ve had Rachel Reeves [whose policies have harmed farmers], a drought, dismal yields and now we’ve got TB. And it’s the first year we made a loss on the farm.” He and the team sit around a campfire, trying to think of the positives: there have been new puppies, a new baby (for Kaleb), and at least the sheep have been a success.
But then we cut to Charlie, who tells a distraught Clarkson that a post-mortem showed the slaughtered cow never actually had TB, so was killed, along with its unborn calves, for no reason. And four days later, in the very final scene, we see Clarkson lying in a hospital bed, informing the camera: “Treatment has gone awry, let’s just say. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If this is all successful, I’ll see you for season six. If it isn’t. I won’t. Take care everyone.” As “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” begins to play over the end credits, it’s clear, this show has become something else altogether. Yes, there will always be jokes about very small pigs resembling Richard Hammond. And there’ll even be jokes about living with cancer. But there will be genuinely hard times, too.
