‘Clarkson’s Farm’ Producer Andy Wilman: Ratings Success Has Been Unexpected, But Jeremy Will Walk Away When He’s Got Nothing Left To Say
EXCLUSIVE: Andy Wilman looks like a man who’s not seen sunlight for a while. Peering down the barrel of a Zoom call, he’s got a touch of man flu after a spell in his editing bunker. Wilman is perpetually “in an edit.” He’s currently honing the final episode of The Grand Tour, but he could just as well be looking at rushes from Clarkson’s Farm Season 4. It is his happy place.
We talk just days after Season 3 has been confirmed as Amazon Prime Video’s highest-rated UK original, sitting acres ahead of lavishly-budgeted series including Fallout and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Not bad for a show in which the centerpiece storyline is the birthing journey of a pig named Baroness. Clarkson’s Farm was, in Wilman’s words, conceived as Clarkson’s “solo album” away from Richard Hammond and James May, but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that it has become bigger than the band.
Each of the first three seasons has chronicled a year on Diddly Squat, Clarkson’s 1,000-acre farm nestled in the ancient stone villages of the Cotswolds. Once better known as a member of the Chipping Norton set (a wealthy Cotswolds clique that includes ex-prime minister David Cameron), the presenter is now more synonymous with drilling grain into fields in his Lamborghini tractor. The transformation was not inevitable. Wilman admits to having serious jitters during the making of Season 1 in 2019. Could Clarkson cope without his co-hosts? Would he be a fish out of water but without the comedy?
“I don’t think we saw the real magic until the sheep arrived,” Wilman says, reflecting on the anarchic arrival of drone-herded mutton in Season 1. “And obviously Kaleb [Cooper] bollocking Jeremy. Those are the moments where you go: alright, we’ve really got something here.”
Kaleb, for those who don’t know, is Clarkson’s skilled assistant. He is one of a cast of characters that fell into Wilman’s lap during filming and have become as much a part of the show’s success as Clarkson himself. There’s Charlie Ireland, the fastidious Diddly Squat land manager; Gerald Cooper, the incomprehensible farm handyman; and Lisa Hogan, Clarkson’s girlfriend of seven years. Hogan has emerged as a hero for farmers’ wives in Britain, with one voicing a BBC Radio 4 ode to Lisa on the morning of Wilman’s interview. She mucks in, runs the farm shop, and takes no s*** from Clarkson, which Wilman thinks female viewers are particularly thankful for.
This community is what grounds Clarkson’s Farm and gives it that most precious of TV commodities: authenticity. “Everybody wants to be in that little world because it’s a bit of a 1950s world where a big problem is a cow that’s in trouble, or a dam that’s not mended. Very little of consequence happens,” Wilman says. “It’s like an escape pod. Forget all your troubles and be on Clarkson’s Farm.”
Season 2’s story arc follows Clarkson’s fight against local planning authorities as he seeks to build a Diddly Squat restaurant. Season 3’s throughline was not so obvious, but Clarkson came up with the idea of splitting the farm with Cooper and competing to see who can make the most money from the land. It’s a wheeze straight out of his Top Gear days, but Wilman says the idea is also a testament to Clarkson’s eye for “journalistic detail,” keeping viewers informed and giving them an insight into the brutal economics of farming. Clarkson may be wealthier than his counterparts — a fact Clarkson’s Farm often addresses head-on — but that does not mean he is any less invested in the farm’s success.
“He’s a restless man, he needs work, he needs things to do. And he loves that farm, he’s really at peace in that place,” Wilman says of his friend. Farm’s success on Amazon has been a happy by-product: “He never saw this coming in his career [at the age of] 64. He thought his big end moment was that we end The Grand Tour successfully.”
Season 4 is currently shooting and Wilman, despite being a confessed “glass half empty” guy, seems comfortable with the progress. He is uncertain whether there will be a Season 5 — and not necessarily because they are at the mercy of Amazon’s green light. “I’ve got no feelings on whether there’s a five or not,” Wilman says. “Jeremy’s the same. He’s like: when we’ve got nothing left to say, let’s walk away.”
This perspective was not a luxury they enjoyed last year. Amazon was incandescent about Clarkson’s Meghan Markle column in The Sun newspaper and Variety reported that the streamer was prepared to cancel the presenter. Sources say the report caught Wilman and colleagues off guard as they were filming Season 3, but it proved to be wide of the mark. Amazon did eventually renew Clarkson’s Farm, but only after some spicy comments at the Edinburgh TV Festival, where executives claimed the show was bigger than the presenter. Wilman does not entirely disagree. “To me, he’s like the tent pole, it would all collapse without him, but he does need a foil,” he says.
Ultimately, few content chiefs would cancel a series on the up. Clarkson’s Farm was watched by 5.2M on its return, making it the second biggest show on a streaming service in the UK this year. Does Wilman think it could persuade Jeff Bezos to join the Chipping Norton set? “I think we’d have to show him where it is,” he smiles. “I hope he watches it because he must be going: ‘Bloody hell. This show doesn’t cost me a lot and gets these numbers.’”
There has been talk of Amazon licensing old episodes of Clarkson’s Farm to a British broadcaster and it is not hard to imagine the show finding a home in ITV’s primetime schedule, for example. It is, in many ways, heartland public service broadcasting. Unsurprisingly, Wilman is supportive of a second window sale: “I wouldn’t have a problem with it. It’s made the noise, so I just want as many people as possible to watch it. What is Amazon’s business model about keeping it to themselves or pumping out an earlier series to get more people to watch the later ones? That’s up to them. We’re just here at the f*****g coalface making the next thing.”
