Television… it was all so much easier with just three channels to choose from
YESTERDAY, the second series of my farming show landed on Amazon.
It took a team of clever, hard-working people 18 months to make, but as all eight episodes were dumped online in one go, you could consume the lot in just a few hours.
This was seen, a few years ago, as the way forward.
We lived in a connected world of instant gratification where you could have a Thai curry brought round to your door — along with anything else you fancied — in 20 minutes flat.
So why should you have to wait for a week to watch the next episode of your favourite TV show?
Quite right. I’m a terrible binge-watcher. Even if it’s three in the morning, and I have to be up at six to feed the cows, I’ll think, “I’ll do just one more episode”, and keep right on going.
READ MORE FROM JEREMY CLARKSON
Now, however, there are moves in the television industry to go back to the olden days and make us wait.
Bosses looked at Happy Valley, which was released on a weekly basis, and are arguing that worked well.
Ha. Not for me it didn’t. I watched all three seasons in four days!
Then there’s The Last Of Us. This is also being released in dribs and drabs and I find that infuriating.
Most read in The Sun
Everyone is telling me how good it is but I can’t start watching until I can watch the lot. I don’t have the patience. Or the mental capacity if I’m honest.
When I was a kid, everything was in black and white and there was nothing to do all day except whittle wood, so it was easy to remember what was happening in the only drama on TV.
Not any more. Today, there are hundreds of dramas on TV and how can you possibly be expected to hold all those plot lines in your head when you’ve also got to remember the password for your wifi router and how to charge your car and how to programme your air fryer.
If I had to watch all my favourite box sets on a week-by-week basis, I’d sit there for half an hour wondering why there were so many cows in Hebden Bridge before realising I was watching Yellowstone, not Happy Valley.
Then I’d be as confused as hell by why a Swedish detective was trying to solve the problems of crystal meth production in New Mexico by staring out over a Scandinavian lake.
And is Harrison Ford married to Sarah Lancashire? No wait. He’s in 1923. Or is it the other one?
So here’s a tip. If you fancy watching Clarkson’s Farm, do it all in one go.
Or you’ll only end up wondering why Kaleb has suddenly appeared on a tractor in Peaky Blinders.
Putin's tyrant perks
I’VE been captivated by the brilliant BBC2 series called Putin, Russia And The West.
It’s fair and balanced and informative and it’s left me feeling extremely uncomfortable.
Because Putin is a tyrant. His word in Russia is the law. And what he wants done, gets done. There is no debate.
And he’s up against the West, where you have the Polish foreign minister at odds with his counterparts in Italy and Spain about what to do next.
And British politicians voting down the wishes of their Prime Minister, and the French being French.
And the Dutch using emotion to swing votes.
And David Cameron taking Putin to a judo match to win him over while the Americans plot to bring him down.
Trying to get the West to agree on anything is like trying to sweep air with a brush made from water.
And meanwhile, Putin marches on. And on.
Sad for Syria
A FEW years ago, while making Top Gear’s Middle Eastern special, we spent one night in the Syrian city of Al Raqqa.
“Welcome in Syria, Captain Slow,” the locals chanted as James May climbed out of his BMW Z3.
We were then taken into their houses and their shops and eventually to a bar where we smoked a hubble pipe and watched Top Gear on a TV.
I’ve always remembered that night because since we were there, Al Raqqa has been devastated by IS and then the Syrian leadership and then the Russians.
And now they’ve been clobbered by this truly dreadful earthquake.
It makes me sad so I have donated the fee for writing this column to The Sun’s Red Cross relief effort.
I hope you are all able to spare something as well.
Rapist let-off
DAVID CARRICK, that disgusting rapist policeman, was given 36 life sentences this week, which means he should be inside, by my reckoning, for at least 2,500 years.
The judge, however, obviously has a different calculator to me and says he could be freed in just 30 years.
What’s her idea of a “lifespan”? Is she thinking about mice?
Is Burt the best ever?
IT’S fair to say that even the most talented songwriters only ever produce a handful of songs that can be considered truly great.
In the eight years they worked together, Lennon and McCartney wrote 180 songs but some of those were forgettable, and some were just plain awful.
In fact, I’ve spent a couple of hours racking my brains on this one and reckon they wrote fewer than ten that can be considered absolute belters.
I’m a massive Who fan but even I’ll admit that in all the time they’ve been together, only five or six songs are up there with the best of the best.
And I know this is going to prompt some healthy debate but it’s probably the same story with the Stones, Bowie, Dylan, Led Zep and Simon and Garfunkel.
All of which brings me on to Burt Bacharach, who died this week at the age of 94.
He wrote Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head which was used in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid to create my favourite movie scene of all time.
And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Over the years, he also wrote Say A Little Prayer, Walk On By, (They Long To Be) Close To You, I’ll Never Fall In Love Again, the theme from Arthur, and Highway To Hell. Though I may have made that last one up.
He wrote hits for Dionne Warwick, Perry Como, the Carpenters and even Judas Priest – though, again, that might not be strictly accurate.
So when you’re talking about the greatest song-writer ever, he has to be up there.
Pop at China
I THOUGHT that to do spying successfully, you had to sneak about quietly and unobtrusively so no one notices you.
So why on Earth would the Chinese attach their spy cameras to a helium balloon that was 200 feet tall.
And which could only be steered by the wind?
It’d be like setting up a private detective business and using a monster truck to follow the target.
You’re going to get noticed.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
And why on Earth would the Americans use a £300,000 missile to bring it down?
When a 10p drawing pin would have been just as effective.