The Canadian cut-up Tom Green was always an acquired taste.
He showed up on the Canadian comedy scene post-“Second City,” a young self-promoting prankster who got “The Tom Green Show” on fringe Canadian TV and then MTV, making a name for himself for his manic, goofy persona, unfiltered mouth and his sometimes off-color pranking.
At its “best,” The Tom Green Show” was “Young Benny Hill gives birth to ‘Jackass.'”
In his peak years, Green ventured into movies — kudos for paying Wikipedia to describe the fiasco “Freddy Got Fingered” as a “cult film, chief — hosted “Saturday Night Live,” married and divorced Drew Barrymore and survived testicular cancer.
As his career faded, he took shots at posing as a rapper, tried to be a talk show host, podcaster and stand up comic and kept his “brand” alive by doing documentaries about his life during this or that change in focus.
“Tom Green Country” is his latest venture. And considering the success of “Clarkson’s Farm,” Amazon picking this series up isn’t the stupidest money Jeff Bezos ever spent. It’s a comedian-takes-up-“hobby”-farming reality series. That could work.
Green tells us he sold a house in “the Hollywood Hills” and bought a quite primitive, old Ontario farm. It’s rustic as all get out, even if the log cabin he lives in has seemingly all the modern comforts. We see his elaborate TV/podcast production studio set up. Then we watch him have a new outhouse installed and wonder how much, if any, of this is “real.”
Green buys a custom-made henhouse to raise chickens and gets “instructed” on how it’s done. He samples one of the dead, dried meal worms that are their feed.
He buys a donkey and a mule, and learns about them and is taught how to ride.
He leans on hired assistance and the help of his once-pranked parents, Mary Jane and Richard, who show him how to raise asparagus with his mom calling him a “spoiled baby” for only wanting to eat the “soft tops.”
And Green wrote and sings the title tune, which is as “country” as it gets.
“Headin’ home to the country, to the place I’ve always been. Goodbye to California, and all the things I’ve seen. Goin’ back to Canada, to live my American dream…”
A lot of people with the money to do so — rich newspaper columnists among them — bought small farms when COVID brought the world to a halt. And those farms became column fodder and book pitches for some, video blogs for others.
So there’s little novelty to Green going “country.” The stakes are low, as he’s not making a living farming or trying to make a farm “pay” the way Jeremy Clarkson does in his far superior and funnier (and sadder) series.
Green picks up his companion/dog Charlie and carries her on stage with him for stand-up performances in small-cities and large all over Ontario. And we’re reminded again of that “acquired taste” thing. The shtick barely provokes so much as a smirk.
He’s not particularly original in his ’50s. Tom Green has aged into Red Green, a Red Green with a fondness for “poo” and “pee” jokes and lots of F-bombs.
The best way to describe the show comes from his mother, who gives him “notes” on his attempts at humor, suggesting his comic instincts have faded. He tries to say something funny and then “belabors” the joke, Mom reminds him.
Always listen to Mom, Tom Green.
The hobby farm is lovely — not sure where it is, but he grew up in Pembroke, and Lyndhurst is also mentioned — and my favorite bit from it was having an Ontario wildlife official help him set up a wildlife camera where they spy bears, porcupines, raccoons and wolves on the property.
But the sucky stand-up, limp “interviews” (an unfunny, delusional “Sasquatch” expert) and aged out of his brand Green don’t give this show much of a future.
Rating: TV-MA, profanity, scatological humor
Cast: Tom Green,
Credits: Directed by Tom Green. An Amazon Prime release.
Running time: four episodes (+?) @:30 minutes each
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