In my last blog, I mentioned that my solo viewing pursuits included Sabrina (the one with Kiernan Shipka), Anne with an E (the one without Megan Follows) and Bridgerton (the one with the humping). Some might say these are somewhat clichéd choices, that my viewing has become a tad tame and predictable. I should break out of my comfort zone, try something different, push my boundaries a bit. For inspiration, I looked to my other half, to see what his solo pursuits included (stop sniggering at the back). My husband’s tastes, it turns out, are just as hackneyed as mine – Netdix to my Netchix, if you will. I dismissed Ozark and Bosch as too grey and murdery, which I’m afraid left me with only one option: Clarkson’s Farm.

It’s a surprisingly low-key title – I would have expected him to call it CLARKSON’S BEEF DEN or CLARKSON COMES A CROPPER; something meaty and manly, implying that the cows are going to be culled with rocket launchers, and the carrots are going to be really, really big. I don’t like Jeremy Clarkson; always found Top Gear irritating and fake – all that money thrown at a bunch of giggling schoolboys with a heavy script. There’s a children’s hairdresser in Crouch End where kids can sit in toy cars – they vroom away while some poor stylist attempts to give them a short back and sides without clipping them round the ear. I felt much the same energy watching Hammond et al skidding round racetracks, so did not approach this new lark with much enthusiasm, even as my husband assured me ‘it’s really good, despite Jeremy Clarkson’. In the end, I watched it because I’m trying to go vegetarian, and I thought it might put me off meat. The reason I’m going vegetarian is because Phil Spencer shot that deer, which upset me so much I decided enough was enough. I’ve had my Phil of entitled middle-aged white men playing lord of the manor, so watched the first ep with folded arms and a tapping foot, thinking Jeremy had better bring something unexpected to the scrubbed table.

At least the backdrop is pretty – lush Cotswolds countryside shrouded in mists and mellow fruitfulness. Clarkson owns a 1000-acre farm near Chipping Norton which he previously paid someone to manage but when that someone retired, Jeremy decided to take it on himself – how hard can it be, etc. So the set-up is ‘real’ but I wonder how many farmers have the cushion of a lucrative TV career to fall back on. In the first episode, he buys a Lamborghini tractor for 40K, but I suppose he had to invest in some major horsepower to appease the TG crowd.

What struck me straight away is how much land he actually has to drive his new toy around. His acreage is vast, stretching for miles, and, given that I can’t cope with our 10 square-foot back yard, I couldn’t begin to comprehend how anyone could stay across all that. Neither can Jeremy, who employs a land agent, the quietly posh and put-upon Charlie Ireland, there to remind him of all those pesky regulations that prevent him storing fuel and flammables together. He also takes on Kaleb Cooper, a prarpurrr farmurrr who’s like a character out of This Country, has never read a book but knows his combine harvesters. Refreshingly, Kaleb doesn’t take any of Jeremy’s shit, taking him to task for his poor cultivation and generally putting the kick in side-kick. Clarkson’s self-portrayal as a bit of a bumbling idiot caused my foot to pause and my arms to loosen a jot. He’s learning, and so are we – there’s a moment where Charlie explains the importance of tramlines in crop fields, and I was bowled over by the precise ingenuity of it all.

But who on earth would be a farmer? A real one, I mean. Continually in this series, we see that the maths of it doesn’t add up – a sheep’s wool is worth less than the cost of shearing, seeds sprout in the bag before you can get them in the ground, a beetle lays waste to a whole harvest, potatoes sell for pennies. The investment almost always outweighs the return. Jeremy’s fine – he can persuade Amazon to commission another series with a socking great fee for himself, or dip into his £43 million previous earnings. But what this show brings home is how back-breakingly unrewarding the job usually is; the reality of living off the land, when the land is a sodden money pit.

Jeremy’s story isn’t real, but the message is. A farmer is buffeted by so many harsh winds – the weather, Brexit, labour costs, the weather, the vagaries of the market, pests, the weather; incessant rain that hammers down for weeks, everyone moaning – no one ever saw the like, it’s that global warming, that’s what. This was the point where I began to lean forwards in my seat, arms slack. Years ago, when I worked in telly, someone from an environmental agency came to give us a talk. They’d decided that TV people were going to save the world – that we were the ones who could seed and grow the notion of the climate emergency in an accessible way that would filter into the public consciousness. Not didactic, preachy documentaries, but regular allusions threaded lightly, engagingly, through whatever we made. I was really struck by their argument, and vowed to weave in a reference wherever I could. But I never imagined that a powerful and compelling portrayal of the crisis would come from punchy, petrol-head Jezza. Who’d have thought? I’m sticking with this series, hoping by the end of it he’ll be hugging trees and going vegan.

I still don’t like him. But he makes very good TV. And TV just might save the world.

• Clarkson’s Farm, 8 episodes, Amazon Prime