This Is a Gardening Show review – Zach Galifianakis’ charming new series feels like perfect TV

This might sound like heresy to some, but I can comfortably assert that the reason I am not a skilled horticulturist is Gardeners’ World. When I was growing up, Gardeners’ World – appointment television as mandated by my father – felt like the longest, dullest 30 minutes of the week. When the theme tune came on, I could feel my life force draining away. How different things could have been if This is a Gardening Show had been around back then.

Hosted by Zach Galifianakis, there are moments when This Is a Gardening Show feels like the perfect programme. Part lesson, part lark and part warning, the series’six 15-minute episodes have such a deliriously light touch that it makes you want to run outside and plunge your hands into the soil.

A huge part of this is down to Galifianakis. A longtime gardener, who started growing peanuts when he moved to Los Angeles, Galifianakis manages to locate the sweet spot for the curious beginner. He does this by talking to a lot of children.

Each episode begins with some seemingly impromptu interviews with kids. It’s a smart move, because it allows Galifianakis to stretch the muscles he worked on Between Two Ferns, alternately absurd and mocking. In the opening episode, he plays a game of true or false about different apple varieties. “Red delicious?” he asks some slightly disbelieving kids. “Sausage fingers? Diarrhoea town?” It is endlessly charming, and the children invariably fall in love with him.

Zach Galifianakis wearing a red plaid shirt and grey trousers talks to a boy in white T-shirt and jeans as they sit on logs arranged in a circle

After that, Galifianakis trails off to meet an expert. This is where the meat of the gardening information happens. He visits a sun-dappled tomato farm and learns about the types of tomatoes that are most likely to survive the climate crisis. He meets a composting expert, who is filled with such joy about her job that it’s hard not to hang on her every word. He goes foraging, and asks: “Will this devastate my bowels?”

Despite all the toilet talk – there’s also a segment called Bobbing for Turds that is fairly self-explanatory – the sheer charm of This Is a Gardening Show cannot be ignored. Directed by Brook Linder, the man responsible for giving last year’s Everybody’s Live With John Mulaney such a distinctive look, the series feels like a funnier, grumpier Sesame Street. Small animated tracts offer historical lessons about various produce, and episodes are studded with time-lapse photography to show you how quickly you can eat what you plant.

It’s hard to imagine a better host for this show. Galifianakis knows that it’s for beginners – upfront, he claims to know barely anything himself – so it is a joy to see him self-deprecatingly beat himself up for not already knowing various horticultural methods. And when some of the experts out themselves as tricky characters, you can see how excited he is to play along. A case in point is Murray, a grizzled corn farmer whose string of (bleeped) profanities instantly undermines Galifianakis’s thesis that gardening makes everyone happier.

Zach Galifianakis wearing a blue jacket, grey trousers and a tan trappers hat stands with his arms outstretched in a field by a red painted barn

And then, hidden deep in the show’s DNA, is the warning. Time and time again, Galifianakis states that “the future is agrarian”, because humankind cannot possibly maintain its unsustainable march of consumption unless it learns to grow its own food. It’s clearly a cause he passionately believes in, but he knows better than to force it down people’s throats. Better to show them how much fun it is, and how rewarding it can be to eat things that you grew yourself, and the perennial joy of a well-timed poo joke.

I wonder what people like my dad – whose shelves are lined with gardening books, and who loves nothing more than to get lost in the weeds of specific gardening techniques – will make of This Is a Gardening Show. Something tells me it won’t be for them. This might prove to be a little too entry level. And that’s fine, because Gardeners’ World still exists. And it’s a perfectly good series. Even I eventually aged into appreciating it.

But for novices, This Is a Gardening Show is perfect. It’s funny, looks beautiful and brims with such unalloyed enthusiasm that you can’t help but fall in line. I’m already making plans to show this to my kids. If it lands as hard as I think it will, the next generation of gardeners starts here.

The Guardian wp:paragraph