The novelty’s mostly worn off but some of the charm remains on “Clarkson’s Farm” as the British TV series about a rich and famous novice farmer’s misadventures in Oxfordshire returns for its fifth season.

Veteran TV presenter and “Top Gear” star Jeremy Clarkson‘s curiosity and attraction to the “new” has him experimenting with “farming’s future” via a self-driving AgBot tractor and other gadgets, partner Lisa brings snails into the “livestock” selection and guinea fowl are pranked onto Clarkson by a clever daughter.

The Farmer’s Dog pub venture that he started last season is a going concern — so popular that it’s losing money at a quicker clip.

And professional farmer Kaleb Cooper‘s youthful celebrity has worn thin and kind of gone to his head as he becomes the John Henry foil to Clarkson’s efforts to automate farming in the new Dutch style.

There’s less injury-prone slapstick and matters turn sentimental as our star learns hard lessons about the heirloom pigs he’s been raising and having butchered for the pub. There’s a reason some fruit, vegetable and livestock varieties popular in the past passed from farming favor.

And things get political as the privileged Boris Johnson-bro Clarkson wades into Labour tax schemes designed to penalize rich gentlewoman and gentleman farming dilletantes like himself which might (we can’t take his word for this) also have a negative impact on legacy farms and more marginal operations than ones owned by a rich guy and partically subsidized by Amazon.

As someone who’s moved “back to the land” myself, with farms and farmer friends all around us, the most interesting diversion in this series is a trip to the famously-productive farm country, The Netherlands, to see and then try-out the latest innovations in hi-tech ag.

The Dutch historically have gotten more out of every acre of hard-won land diked-off from the sea, and that disparity is growing as they take soil analysis, micromanaged fertilizer and digital, driverless planting, fertilizing and harvesting into the future.

Growing up in Virginia’s “Heart of Tobaccoland,” we’d hear teachers talk about the poor local soil where I live and how the Dutch were able to grow damn near anything in abundance by intensive soil preservation, fertilization and close and careful attention to every square centimeter of arable land.

Clarkson and the naif Kaleb experience this first hand as Clarkson buys into “game control” farming on some of his fields, altering the crops he cultivates even as he has to adjust the livestock selection and mix on the Diddly Squat Farm.

We don’t hear prices or even confirmation that Clarkson has to buy this pricey looking AgBot gear and the tech support the Dutch offer.

We aren’t given the numbers that the pub — barely tolerated by its neighbors, apparently a target for those who like to exploit ancient rite-of-way rights and disgruntled employees — does that are putting it in the red.

The new sheep and new fowl brought in present their own inconveniences.

And a rather gratuitous sheep autopsy is served up to…prove it died?

The pragmatic truths of farming always rear their head on this show, an important reminder that those chops and that steak once lived, had a name, a personality and affectionate regard by the city slicker couple (Clarkson and Irish TV presenter Lisa Hogan) before it turned up as your menu option.

But by and large, they’re running low on new things for Clarkson to mess up doing and new tricks to try on the 1000 acre Diddley Squat “working” hobby farm.

The hype about Clarkson’s “heart attack” results in a less hands-on experience for the ageing TV star, and the politics never escape the “Tory spin” on what’s really going on in a country that xenophic and racist conservatives voted out of Europe and into chaotic transitions and a hobbled economy that served no one outside of The Kremlin.

But at least the old dog “petrolhead” is finally talking about climate change, “new tricks” for a new farmer to struggle with as farming faces a future where machines take over jobs that fewer and fewer people are willing to do.

Rating: TV-PG, profanity, animal deaths and butchery

Cast: Jeremy Clarkson, Kaleb Cooper, Lisa Hogan, Gerald Cooper, Annie Grey, Dilywn Evans and Charlie Ireland

Credits: Created by Jeremy Clarkson and Andy Wilman. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: Eight episodes @:45-52 minutes each