Vinnie Jones has responded to claims his Discovery+ series is copying Clarkson’s Farm, calling it “an in-the-country show” with a different focus. The comparisons are inevitable in the post-Clarkson countryside TV boom—but they miss what Jones’ show is actually trying to be.
If you make a countryside reality series in 2026, someone will inevitably shout “Clarkson!” before they have even found the remote. That is exactly the noise Vinnie Jones is pushing back against this week, after claims that his Discovery+ show Vinnie Jones In The Country is riding the coattails of Jeremy Clarkson’s Prime Video smash Clarkson’s Farm.
Jones, now 61, launched Vinnie Jones In The Country in 2023, filming his attempt to wrangle 2,000 acres in West Sussex while taking on a string of ambitious farmyard build projects. The series is currently airing its third season, and he has been juggling it alongside work on Guy Ritchie’s Netflix hit The Gentlemen. But it is the Clarkson comparisons that have clearly got under his skin.
Vinnie Jones responds to Jeremy Clarkson ‘copying’ accusations
Jones has been blunt about how the chatter has landed. Speaking to Radio Times, he said: “It’s a show without an agenda, and it’s not a farm show – it’s an in-the-country show.
“Everyone’s tried to hang it on Clarkson’s Farm, which I find a bit upsetting. Jeremy’s done a fantastic job raising awareness for farmers, but ours is a different little show.”
That is a smart line of defence, because it hits the real difference in positioning. Clarkson’s Farm is, unapologetically, a farming show. It is tractors, combines, weather disasters, bureaucracy, and the kind of financial jeopardy that makes you laugh and then feel guilty for laughing.
Jones even underlined the gap in scale and sheen with a perfectly dry detail: “After our second series, I think we were given a sponsored rake. Look at Clarkson’s Farm: tractors, combines – everything!”
Clarkson’s Farm effect: the countryside TV boom is real
Here is the uncomfortable truth for everyone involved: Clarkson did not invent rural living, but he absolutely reset the market for it. After Clarkson’s Farm became a cultural event, commissioners started looking at the countryside as entertainment again, not just as background scenery for cosy dramas.
So when a new show arrives with a famous face, mud, gates, and a learning curve, the comparison is not just lazy, it is inevitable. That does not automatically make it a copy. It makes it part of a post-Clarkson wave.
Vinnie Jones’ countryside show has a different emotional core
Jones’ motivation also reads very differently. He has said the idea took shape during the coronavirus lockdown, after the death of his wife Tanya in 2019 following a six-year battle with cancer. He has talked about spending lockdown watching Netflix boxsets, then wanting to “dive into the countryside” when he got back outside.
He also frames himself less as a performative farmer and more as a genuine outdoors obsessive, crediting his father and even joking that his “Mastermind specialist subject would be British nature”. He calls Sir David Attenborough his “hero”, and in one of the most revealing lines about who he really is, Jones said: “I’m not a South London gangster, never have been – yesterday I sat for six hours just to see a kingfisher.”
Our take: stop treating every rural series like a Clarkson spin-off
For Grand Tour Nation readers, the loyalty to Clarkson is baked in. He earned it. But the strangest outcome of Clarkson’s Farm being brilliant is that it has become a yardstick used to swat away anything vaguely adjacent.
If Jones’ show genuinely has “no agenda” and leans into rural life, nature, and community, that is not a threat to Clarkson’s crown. If anything, it is proof that Clarkson’s success has broadened the space for countryside TV that is not twee and not scripted.
The real win is this: more people watching, more people talking, and more awareness of rural life, whether it comes with a combine harvester or a sponsored rake.
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