It’s odd to see Zach Galifianakis being sweet.
A uniquely gifted comedian with significant acting range — from The Hangover movies to the Baskets TV series — Galifianakis has, in recent years, become known for the insulting and underprepared interviewer persona he puts on for his YouTube series Between Two Ferns. On it he asked Barack Obama how it felt to be the last black President (“Seriously?” Obama responded) and told Brad Pitt, “You play a lot of people that are Nazi hunters, which is weird to me.” “Why do you say that?”, Pitt asked. “Because you look like Hitler’s dream,” said Galifianakis.
It’s a shtick we’ve seen before — and Galifianakis owes a larger debt to Martin Short’s offensively ignorant interviewer Jiminy Glick than, say, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G — but there’s something about the bearded Greek comic that makes it forever unclear how sincere he is and how much of it is a gag. Maybe this guy really does think Jon Hamm’s middle name is “Honeybaked”?
All this changes on Netflix’s This Is A Gardening Show, where Galifianakis spars with children about root vegetables, giggling good-naturedly with them, and then learns from farmers and agriculturalists about grafting tomatoes or foraging for mushrooms. The actor is clearly interested in farming himself, and comes to the subject with his trademark unpreparedness, but, while wide-eyed, he’s also enthusiastically hungry to learn. This curiosity is extremely infectious.
Galifianakis speaks in an offhandedly absurd way, coming up with lines that are beautiful, describing the tomato, for instance, as “a gateway drug to the garden” but also, quite simply, as “pre-ketchup.” He brings both goofiness and earnestness to the enterprise, but even this is something we have seen before, from a truly unlikely source.
Jeremy Clarkson, the infamous and iconic host of Top Gear, a man who once treated horsepower like a personality trait, now spends time arguing with sheep — and losing. Clarkson's Farm (Amazon Prime) is gloriously, stubbornly watchable because it traps a titan of bluster in mud that does not care for his condescension. The series is all friction: Clarkson vs the weather, Clarkson vs the paperwork, Clarkson vs the soft-spoken, flint-hard pragmatism of Kaleb Cooper, his tractor manager, who punctures the big blowhard with a glance.
The charm in that series lies in the process, in the slow choreography of sowing, lambing, harvesting, and in the dawning recognition that margins are thin while rules are thick. Episodes linger on council battles over the farm shop, on prices that wobble, on neighbors who depend on seasons behaving. The series is incredibly unlikely because of Clarkson, as unbearable as he is relateable, and the show becomes quietly instructive about modern agriculture. Failure is the point, and the land, vast and indifferent, keeps stealing the scene.
Galifianakis, however, is aiming smaller. This Is A Gardening Show is neither manual nor handbook, but merely a slice of sunny optimism and wholesomeness. This first season feels more YouTube-length than streaming, with six 15-minute episodes that go down smoother than freshly-squeezed orange juice. Do we smile through each episode? Most definitely. Do we learn from each episode? Sure, but not too much — about as much as we would from an informative Instagram reel. Let’s call it a microdose of learning.
The importance of its sunniness cannot be overstated. It feels less like a Netflix series and more like looking out of the window for awhile. In the middle of the streaming media landscape of true-crime and sensationalism, This Is A Gardening Show feels like an oasis of calm. This modest and well-meaning show, one with every bit of edginess sanded off, offers a soothing experience akin to the afternoon television of our youth. I do believe Mr Rogers — who hosted Mr Rogers Neighbourhood, of which my favourite segments were the ones showing how various things were made in factories — would wholly approve of these horticultural adventures.
Zach Galifianakis has built a career out of standing slightly sideways to the joke, as if humour were a door he refuses to enter properly, never closing the loop and always leaving the punchline slightly ajar. From the unexpected melancholy of Baskets to the sneaky poignance of Bored To Death, he plays men who seem to have wandered in from a different film or series. What makes him special is his commitment to discomfort as texture, letting pauses linger until they become punchlines. He is shaggy, shambling, yet sharply precise, a performer who hides craft behind chaos. Even at his broadest, there’s a quiet sadness humming underneath, like a joke told to fill a silence that never quite leaves.
This bumbling host may undercut every sincere sentiment with a funny follow-up, but at one point in This Is A Gardening Show, Galifianakis speaks of why, having witnessed the sheer contentment on the face of an old Greek potato farmer, the actor had made up his mind about wanting to die in a garden. He then immediately makes a lame joke about Olive Garden and breadsticks, but by then the damage is undone. The very thought that this man — who, in The Hangover, stood in a Las Vegas casino and unforgettably wondered if it once belonged to Julius Caesar — could be this profoundly connected to the soil is beautiful and inspirational.
“To plant a garden,” Audrey Hepburn had once said, “Is to believe in tomorrow.” At a time when our governments are chopping down hundreds of trees without conscience or fear of consequence, I can only say that it’s nice to meet a believer.
Streaming tip of the week
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is out for rent on BookMyShow Stream, Apple TV and Amazon. An audacious take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, this angry treatise on female authorship stars Jessie Buckley as the dark-mouthed heroine and a very fun Christian Bale as her Frank. Messy but thrilling.