What do boyband boys do when they grow up and become men? Agriculture mostly, combined with broadcasting. Well, JB from JLS is a presenter on Down on the Farm on CBeebies, as you’ll be aware. And now here’s 5ive’s Abz Love in Country Strife: Abz on the Farm (BBC2, Sunday). All it needs is one more and it will be A Thing (that’s all it takes, three things, to make A Thing). I’ve heard Zayn Malik is in talks to guest edit Farming Today on Radio 4, but it’s not official yet. Also, not really a boy band, and not really farming, but Blur’s Alex James makes cheese, as it’s impossible not to be aware of – he won’t shut up about it.
Anyway, Abz is way more entertaining than Alex James. The bright lights of the big city have lost their buzz, and he and lovely girlfriend Vicky are looking for a quieter life. They’ve got a big dream, for a smallholding, to get close to nature and live off the land. Trouble is, they don’t know a lot about the countryside: I don’t think they’ve ever been to it before. So first they’re off, in their black Range Rover Sport, to visit the Lammas eco village in Pembrokeshire to get some tips.
A man named Simon shows them round. “Did you say that was predatorial cabbage?” Abz asks him. No, perennial cabbage – it’s safe to go near the cabbages. Simon tells him not to eat too much phacelia, it could be bad for you. “Good bad for you or bad good for you?” Abz asks. “What are we saying here? Are we saying like good bad, like it’s good but it’s bad but you can’t say that it’s good because it’s bad, or are we saying like good good like the good shit …”
Simon, understandably, is confused. Abz hasn’t really grown up at all yet. He’s still a boy, and a bit of an idiot, but a lovable one, and dead funny. “Is that rhubarb?” (No.) “Is that an apple de-corer?” (No.) He’s impressed with the grass, he’s not going to lie. He’s going to plant fruit galore. There’ll be butterflies, an aviary – he’s just going to go wild with it. It’s so sick man, he loves it. Everything just feels happy here, and harmonious. “It’s like when you get the fish tank set up just right, and you’ve got the pH levels just right and you’ve got the blue light and everything’s happy, all the fish are happy with each other, the ripples. Everything’s nice …”
Oh, but maybe that’s not such a good analogy, because Abz’s fish died. Let’s hope he does better with his livestock when he gets them. He wants chickens, maybe a couple of sheep, a little cow, and some pigs. Again, little ones, not big pigs.
They’ve already got a load of little dogs that need to get used to living with proper farm animals, so it’s back in the Range Rover to visit a livestock market. Television loves a culture clash – me too if I’m being honest –and this is a proper one: Abz giving it the patwa patter alongside some old Welsh rural dudes with faces like walnuts and medieval haircuts. There’s very little common ground or even understanding between them.
“Look at these ducks,” Abz says. About some pheasants. They want a chicken though. “Imagine what we could do with an egg a day, we’ll just be throwing them around,” says Abz. So they buy a male, non-egg-laying cockerel, take him home to Cardiff where they feed him croissants (“he’s a French chicken”) and keep him indoors because they’re considerate and the neighbours “don’t need no cock-a-doodle-dooing at six in the morning”. The dogs, meanwhile, lick their lips.
Abz, Vicky, the little dogs, and (maybe) the cock won’t be here long though, because they’ve now got their smallholding, an absolute ruin of a house in the middle of a bog in the middle of Welsh nowhere. It’s perfect, from a TV point of view if not as a first attempt as self-sufficiency. Can this really be real, or is it mockumentary? Whichever, it’s hilarious and brilliant.
Zoo (Sky1, Sunday), adapted from the novel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, would have been fun (also hilarious, though not intentionally so) whenever it went out. But coming so soon after the Cecil tragedy it also takes on a poignancy. “For centuries, mankind has been the dominant species,” says Jackson Oz (James Wolk), a maverick American zoologist working in Botswana. “We domesticated animals, locked them up, killed them for sport. But what if, all across the globe, the animals decided: no more? What if they finally decided to fight back?”
Which of course is what happens, starting here with the lions of Africa. They’re not just targeting Minnesota dentists I’m afraid; everyone’s getting eaten. But I think we can still call it Cecil’s Revenge.
