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It's fair to say that Jeremy Clarkson has made a career out of being enthusiastic — yet completely hopeless — at anything he turns his hand to. Clarkson's Farm season 5 on Prime Video is solid proof of this, leaving us feeling like Clarkson has learned absolutely nothing during his five years working the land.
For most of the new episodes we've streamed so far, what you see is what you continue to get. Like clockwork, Jeremy is half-heartedly trying and failing to get his new flock of sheep herded, dealing with more complaints at the pub and generally making farm manager Kaleb's life unnecessarily difficult.
From that perspective, we're getting exactly what we wanted. But for me, there are two new edges to Clarkson's Farm season 5. On the one hand, the overarching tone has become a lot more serious, as Jeremy directly challenges the UK government's budget regulations that means British farmers are increasingly unable to turn over a healthy profit (he explains all this a lot better than I can).
But on the other hand, there's a subtle yet scathing critique aimed towards the very fans watching. Heading to the farm shop Diddly Squat or to Jeremy's pub The Farmer's Dog is now on the bucket lists of national and international fans alike... and you only need to see the near-constant queues outside to see how popular they are.
But doing all of this and putting it on global display via Amazon is now starting to have a real knock-on impact — and it speaks to how ignorantly fandoms can treat what they claim to love the most.
Clarkson's Farm season 5 theft statistics are astonishing — but we should be disappointed, not surprised
In episode 1 of Clarkson's Farm season 5, Jeremy stops by the pub and begins telling us that it's haemorrhaging money by hiring a generator as a power source because it's too expensive to get it fixed in the building permanently.
Ouch. But then he goes onto to share that paying out for the generator isn't even half of what the pub is having to pay out for regular thefts inside. The day before, a "fan" had stolen £200 worth of cooking oil from the kitchen, with Jeremy revealing that punters steal on average 400 pint glasses (yes, you read that correctly), a week.
But why are the numbers so high? Because if you go in and nobody's watching, a glass is effectively a free souvenir. You paid for your pint, and Jeremy is rolling around in big Amazon money, so who is it hurting?
To an extent, this is true, but combine these numbers with the fact that so few viewers seem to be bothered by what's happened after the episode aired (just check on social media), and the admission speaks to what's happening in wider fan culture.
The phrase "treat others how you want to be treated" might have gone out of the window for good, even if we are just talking about Jezza.
If the likes of Clarkson's Farm is telling us that fan culture is in the pits, then what does that mean in the wider picture? Can Diddly Squat and The Farmer's Dog continue to function if we're so intent on doing damage? And the question we've been asking ourselves since the beginning of time: can we let ourselves have anything nice?
There's currently no word on how long Clarkson's Farm will continue for, though Jeremy has previously claimed we'll get at least six seasons out of the Prime Video series. Perhaps we should heed what we've seen so far as a personal warning... keep this up and the antics will all be gone before we know it.
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