Clarkson’s Farm could be cancelled after its next series, with Amazon bosses saying they were “shocked and disappointed” by its presenter’s comments about the Duchess of Sussex.
The third series of the hit show about life on Jeremy Clarkson’s Cotswolds farm is being filmed for release in 2024 but Amazon bosses said they have yet to decide if the programme will return for a fourth run.
Clarkson, 63, was ruled to have discriminated against Meghan when he wrote in his column in the Sun newspaper how he hated her on a “cellular level” and suggested she had used “vivid bedroom promises” to transform Prince Harry into a “warrior of woke”.
The Amazon Prime Video executive Fozia Khan said the streaming service had been upset by Clarkson’s comments about the duchess in December 2022, which attracted a record number of complaints to the press regulator Ipso. He has since apologised for the column.
Khan said the team were “shocked and disappointed” but made the decision to continue filming the forthcoming series: “I think the thing that I want to say is that the show is so much bigger than Clarkson.”
Her colleague Dan Grabiner said the company had yet to decide whether to recommission Clarkson’s Farm, which is by far the company’s most popular UK-made show.
The industry magazine Variety has claimed that Amazon will cut its longstanding ties with Clarkson once he has fulfilled his existing contractual requirements, meaning Clarkson’s Farm could finish after the next series.
Grabiner told a discussion panel at the Edinburgh television festival: “It’s a very complex topic but we’re not interrupting production of the current season … we get messages from farmers around the world who just love the show, saying they have never really seen their world properly reflected on-screen before, which is amazing. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than Jeremy Clarkson.”
In response, the festival panel host Scott Bryan said the show was hard to separate from the presenter because it has Clarkson’s name in the title.
Clarkson is also waiting to find out if he will be allowed to return as presenter of ITV’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? for another series.
He has already recorded the next series of the show, which will be aired early in 2024, but there are growing doubts at ITV that Clarkson will be able to return as host for any further episodes because of the row over his comments about Meghan.
