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JEREMY CLARKSON
My favourite TV show is joyously unwoke – and that means it’s the best thing I’ve seen in years
There’s no room in movies or on TV these days for debate. Only for Instagrammable facts.
THE main topic of conversation for families and friends these days is what box set you’re currently watching.
And I’m no different. So here goes: Landman. It’s brilliant.
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Oh, I’ve done Brassic, and The Americans, and Rogue Heroes, and Game Of Thrones, and Wolf Hall, and Yellowstone. And they’ve all been very good. But Landman is different.
It’s about an oil man in Texas who has to deal with marauding drug cartels, a mad wife, a son who keeps being beaten up and a pretty daughter who constantly swans around in her underwear.
There’s sex, violence, a tremendous script and, with Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore and John Hamm on hand, a great cast as well.
So far then, so normal. But after watching a few episodes, something began to dawn on me . . .
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Today, when you turn on the television, you know what to expect.
In every post-football match discussion there will be women and in every drama there will be a homosexual and someone wrestling with their gender identity.
And even in the middle of an alien gunfight, there will be a lecture on global warming and why the state of Israel is evil.
Then, during the commercial break, you’ll have a man in a turban who’s enjoying some kind of new yoghurt with his black wife and their Norwegian-looking children.
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That’s how the world is, and how the young people of today want it to be. It’s the same story with politics.
Kim Woodburn IAC legend slams ‘woke’ TV bosses
There’s no room in movies or on TV these days for debate. Only for Instagrammable facts.
Your milk should come from a nut. Your car should be electric.
You should be proud of your son’s gender re-assignment and Donald Trump is a ****.
But then along comes Landman, where we have the main character telling us that beer doesn’t count as drinking, and one of the bit-part players saying there’s nothing wrong with drinking a bit of alcohol while breast-feeding.
Oh, and you should see everyone’s reaction when they’re offered Bud Light.
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There’s more, too. Billy Bob explains to his city-based lawyer that wind turbines are useless and oil is the only way forward, then he lights up another cigarette before whizzing off to break someone’s jaw.
These things aren’t rammed down your throat. It’s so subtle, it takes you a while to notice there is no wokery at all, and not even a hint of political correctness or diversity.
These are oil men and they are acting and talking like oil men do.
God knows how the producers ever got it commissioned.
But they did, and they’ve ended up with a drama, not a lecture.
It’s the best thing I’ve seen on television in years.
APPARENTLY, one in three young people take time off work because they are worried about losing their jobs.
Hmmm. That sounds like a vicious circle to me.
Because the more time you take off, the more likely you are to be fired.
Give it a rest Emma
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THE BBC’s very busy Los Angeles correspondent, Emma Vardy, went on Radio 4 this week to say that some rich people whose homes were threatened by the recent blazes used private fire brigades to keep the flames at bay.
She explained this may sound odd to people in the UK but America is a capitalist country.
Er, I know it annoys Starmer and Reeves and quite a few people at the BBC but Britain is also a capitalist country.
It’s why we have private medicine and private schools, and it’s why some streets in affluent neighbourhoods now have private security patrols.
Of course, all these things could be abolished. We could put the state in charge of everything.
And then it’d be like North Korea.
There’d be no privilege. And everyone would be equally miserable.
ROSS MEREDITH, a police inspector with 27 years of service has been fired for saying Just Stop Oil protesters are “retards” and “spoilt special-needs kids”.
Quite right too. You just can’t use language like that any more.
Which is why, this morning, I shall describe the people who fired him as “not terribly bright”.
Golly Tosh
EVERY year, there’s a new word quickly adopted by annoying young people on social media.
We had “journey”, to describe their trip from a supermarket shelf- stacking job to The X Factor and back again.
Then we had “literally”, which was used before, literally, each word.
Now, after going through “unreservedly”, to describe literally every apology, and “profoundly”, which was always used in tandem with “unreservedly”, we’ve arrived at “egregious”.
Which is now deployed literally every day by literally every Labour MP on their journey from the limelight back to the planning department at Slough Council.
Planet Earth is blue…and there’s nothing we can do
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WAY back in June, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were blasted up to the International Space Station, thinking they’d only be there for a week.
But then a fault was found in the spaceship that was meant to bring them back. So they’re still up there now.
They were told Elon Musk would come to the rescue, in maybe March, but this week they looked out of the window and saw his rocket exploding into a million pieces over the Turks and Caicos Islands.
So now, God knows what will happen. All we can hope is that they remembered to leave enough food out for the cat.
Labels a fat lot of good
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THE Government always knows best.
That’s why there are no potholes on the roads, the NHS is smoothly efficient, our submarines never run out of food while on patrol, and the economy is being propelled along nicely by optimistic effervescence.
It’s also why a scheme forcing the owners of pubs and restaurants to tell customers how many calories are contained in each item on the menu has been such a resounding success.
No, wait, I might have got that bit wrong.
It hasn’t been a resounding success at all. Because people in the hospitality industry are forced to spend time and money, which they do not have, working out how fat the food will make their customers, and then more time and money changing all their menus.
And has it worked? Well, research has shown that when a diner is shown how many calories are contained in each dish, they don’t really care.
Figures just out show that, on average, diners are now consuming 1.8 per cent fewer calories than before.
Which in a 600-calorie meal equates to the same as two almonds. Or a single Pringle.
So, all that time, all that effort, all that Whitehall nannying, and it makes hardly any difference.
And there are people out there who think the Government should be put in charge of the railways . . .
Hairpin spend
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THE Aston Martin F1 team this week denied rumours it is set to invest $1billion to get Max Verstappen as its lead driver.
Good. Because if they blew a billion, one of two things would happen.
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They’d win the world championship and every-one would say: “It’s inevitable if you spend that much.”
Or they wouldn’t win and every-one would split their sides laughing, while saying “Man City” a lot.
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