Jeremy Clarkson says Clarkson’s Farm crew ‘worried about paying the mortgage’ after wrapping filming on show
Jeremy Clarkson has admitted there is uncertainty within the Clarkson’s Farm crew after he admitted he wasn’t sure if it would be back after its sixth season, which finished filming just yesterday.
Appearing at the Royal Television Society London Convention today, the 66-year-old said the prospect of a seventh run remained uncertain.
“We wrapped season six of Clarkson’s Farm final yesterday, and season seven is kind of, ‘What are we going to do?'”
Mr Clarkson revealed he is already working on a new project, but stopped short of offering any details about exactly what it was.
Jeremy Clarkson and Charlie Ireland, his land agent, in Clarkson’s Farm
“We’re currently thinking about what we do after Clarkson’s Farm, and it’s going to have to be something bigger to stand out and protect us from this onslaught from [social media content] underneath,” he said. “It has to be unbelievably ambitious.”
Given the uncertainty, the former Top Gear host painted a bleak picture of the employment landscape facing television professionals once production wraps.
With between 35 and 40 crew members from Clarkson’s Farm now without work, he said they are “sitting at home thinking, ‘How are we going to pay our mortgage?'”
“I know a huge amount of producers that I’ve worked with over the years, really, really clever people, decent, sensible, hard-working people, who cannot find work in the industry,” Mr Clarkson said.
Jeremy Clarkson’s (right) farm in the countryside is the basis for his Amazon series Clarkson’s Farm | AMAZON
His opinions on how to combat this centres on a “fewer, bigger, better” approach to commissioning in a bid to combat dwindling numbers caused by social media.
Mr Clarkson even suggested every major British broadcaster could unite under a single streaming platform.
“I think they are [going to merge], I actually believe more than that,” he said. “I actually think that television in this country can at least survive and should do this, the whole lot of us; BBC, ITV, Sky, Channel Four, Channel Five.”
The Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host used gardening TV as an example of one area of broadcasting under particular threat, especially in the wake of Monty Don’s exit from the BBC’s Gardeners’ World.
