This week’s unexpected emotional hit came from Clarkson’s Farm.

Like many families, ours has spent years watching Jeremy Clarkson evolve from the loud, stubborn petrol-head of Top Gear into something far more interesting. Through Top Gear, The Grand Tour and now Clarkson’s Farm, he’s become a familiar presence in our home. Someone we don’t know personally, but who has nevertheless provided years of laughter, conversation and family time.

So seeing Jeremy’s recent cancer diagnosis play out in the latest season’s last episode was confronting. Not because we thought he was gone — his own social media posts had already reassured viewers he was still very much around — but because illness has touched our family recently too. It is impossible not to feel those moments differently when you’ve lost people you love.

Yet the most powerful part of the season wasn’t Jeremy’s health battle.

It was a cow.

The first calf they had purchased for the farm was flagged as an inconclusive tuberculosis case while pregnant with twins. After weeks in quarantine and repeated uncertainty, the animal was ultimately destroyed under government protocols, only for post-mortem testing to show she was not carrying TB at all. Despite that result, the farm still faced further quarantine restrictions.

It was heartbreaking to watch.

What struck me most was Jeremy’s response. The farming community largely accepted it as one of those awful realities of modern agriculture. Jeremy, as the relative newcomer, kept asking a different question:

“But why?”

Why, in an age where vaccines for entirely new diseases can be developed within months, has this problem persisted for decades? Why are farmers still carrying the financial and emotional burden of a system everyone agrees is flawed?

It reminded me of something I often find myself asking in planning, development and policy discussions. Sometimes the most important question is not how to manage a broken system. It’s whether the system needs to stay broken at all.

The other standout was Hannah, the young bird expert helping restore biodiversity on the farm.

As someone with both ADHD and ASD, I recognised something immediately familiar in her. The enthusiasm. The intensity. The inability to hide genuine excitement. The willingness to become completely absorbed by a subject most people barely notice.

For once, “too much” wasn’t portrayed as something to fix.

It was shown as a strength.

Jeremy’s fascination with her knowledge, and the genuine respect he developed for her work, was one of the most uplifting parts of the season. Her passion changed how he viewed the farm and ultimately delivered real environmental outcomes.

It’s a reminder that expertise often starts with obsession.

And sometimes the people society labels as unusual are the very people solving problems everyone else overlooked.

The season wasn’t all heavy.

The chilli sauce tasting scene during preparations for the Diddly Squat food night was one of the funniest things I’ve watched in years. I laughed so hard I cried.

But perhaps that’s why Clarkson’s Farm works.

Beneath the tractors, livestock and Jeremy’s endless mistakes, it’s really a show about people trying to make things better. Sometimes succeeding. Sometimes failing. Often discovering that the way things have always been done isn’t necessarily the way they should continue.

That’s a lesson that applies just as much to farming as it does to housing, planning and the communities we build.