The first thing to be said about This is a Gardening Show (Netflix) is it’s not a gardening show, not by the British definition, anyway. The actor and comedian Zach Galifianakis’s six-part horticultural tour is all about what we here would call kitchen gardening, but apart from that small transatlantic misunderstanding – don’t expect any tips on when to prune your Type 3 clematis – it is a little gem (lettuce pun intended).
Although the short episodes are titled “Apples”, “Tomatoes”, “Root Vegetables” and so on, the whole show rambles through grow-your-own with little obvious direction, led down several blind alleys and back again by the intensely likeable Galifianakis. In each episode he goes to meet farmers and gardeners to find out things like how you graft apple trees or why you should never water tomato plants from above (it compresses the soil). Galifianakis has been gardening for 25 years, but as with any gardener, there is always more to learn and he is visibly delighted to get better.
The educational element is, however, a very small part. Most of it consists of Galifianakis being amusingly shambolic. He brings his interview style from the cult hit Between Two Ferns – full of non-sequiturs and tangents – but rather than tangling with celebrities as he did in that show, here, as well as farmers and gardeners, he sits down with various young children.
It’s another way in which This is a Gardening Show very much isn’t a normal gardening show, as kids don’t care about gardening and it’s not at all clear what they’re doing here. That said, the segments in which Galifianakis talks about corn with 8-year-olds, but ends up asking them questions like, “Do you have kids?” are hilarious and all of a piece with a show that does what it wants.
‘Do you have kids?’ Galifianakis’s discussions with children are hilarious – Netflix
And, indeed, the children offer a clue to Galifianakis’s other purpose with the series, which is to suggest that we might all be happier if we re-engaged with the land, got our hands dirty and learned that cheeseburgers don’t grow on trees. It is never preachy – Galifianakis simply could not deliver a homily with a straight face – but the message is clear: this is a happy, carefree show full of fulfilled, easy-going people. The future, as Galifianakis says at the end of every episode to no one in particular, is agrarian.
The style of This is a Gardening Show echoes its message. It is free-wheeling and lo-fi, full of what elsewhere would be called bloopers but here constitute endearing imperfections. Sometimes you can get to the 10th minute of a 15-minute episode and realise that he’s barely even talked about say, compost, which is the episode’s title and purported subject. It doesn’t matter. The tastiest fruits are often the ones that look a little funny. This is a Gardening Show is TV from the farmers’ market, not the supermarket. the supermarket.
This is a Gardening Show is on Netflix
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