In 2021, comedian Tom Green left the Hollywood hills, where he had been living for 20 years,; he bought a farm in Ontario, not far from where his parents, Richard and Mary Jane Green live. Tom Green Country is a four-episode docuseries that shows Green figuring out how to become a farmer, with the help of his parents, friends and, well, pretty much everyone, because they have more knowledge than he does.
TOM GREEN COUNTRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A closeup of Tom Green in a cowboy hat. In a voiceover, we hear the comedian say, “Hello, folks. My name is Tom Green. In case you’re wondering who I am and how I got here, it goes a little something like this. I’ve made a big change in my life.”
The Gist: In the first episode of Tom Green Country, Green has friends help him get his farm’s 100-plus-year-old barn ready to receive a mule named Fanny and a donkey named Kia. Green is excited that he’ll be providing a new home for these animals, and isn’t even that flustered when one of his friends tell him that he’ll likley have to chase them down when they escape.
He also helps two fence builders collect fallen trees from the woods on his property in order to build a fence next to that barn. Mary Jane and Richard help Green with his gardening, while Green talks about living near them again and the pranks he pulled on his parents during the years of his MTV show, like painting their house plaid. We see scenes of Green doing standup about having a farm, material that likely ended up in his special I Got A Mule! Finally, Green takes delivery on a new chicken coop and then giddily inhabits it with hens and a rooster, sticking his head in the coop to make sure they know he’s there.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Tom Green Country is one of a trio of projects Green has debuted on Prime this month, including the aforementioned comedy special Tom Green: I Got A Mule! and a documentary with the very Tom Green-esque title This Is The Tom Green Documentary.
Our Take: Tom Green Country, which is directed by Green and produced by Green and his mother Mary Jane, is Green’s way of showing what his life is like now while still maintaining a sense of his dry, mostly blunt, and always silly sense of humor. The version of Green, who is now 53, that we won’t see in this series is the try-anything-for-a-laugh absurdist that rocketed him to stardom in the late 1990s-early 2000s, where his show went from Canadian public access television to the CBC then to MTV, and he had a short-lived and high-profile marriage to Drew Barrymore.
As he discussed in a recent New York Times profile, Green certainly sees himself as being on the forefront of the type of absurdist-prank-based humor that made the gang from Jackass rich later in the naughts — in fact, the show filled airtime while Green was getting treatment for testicular cancer in 2000. The Green we see in Tom Green Country, though, isn’t interested in doing any of that stuff. He’s not at all serious on the show, but he’s very content making jokes about his lack of farming experience and how happy he is to add Kia and Fanny to his farm family.
That certainly makes for a warm, mostly family-friendly show that has a little bit of cursing in parts — in Episode 2, he excitedly says, “This is my first shithole!” as his friends use a backhoe to dig a hole for a new outhouse. Funny moments like that also show that Green doesn’t need to lie face down on a sidewalk to be funny; he’s funny when he talks to his recue pup Charley, he’s funny when he banters with his parents, and he’s funny when he’s talking to a chicken expert about how to make his new poultry population feel at home and start laying eggs.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: We see Green singing a twangy country song he wrote for the closing credits.
Sleeper Star: We know that Mary Jane and Richard Green have been a part of Tom Green’s comedy for decades, but it’s amazing to see exactly where Green’s dry and blunt sense of humor comes from. Richard has a more absurdist tint to his humor, and Mary Jane’s matter-of-factness is pretty damn funny.
Most Pilot-y Line: If we have any criticism of the show is that there aren’t enough shots of Charley.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Tom Green Country is a fun docuseries that shows what the early ’00s pop culture phenomenon is doing now, and how funny Green is, even when he’s not doing his old absurdist shtick.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tom Green Country’ On Prime Video, Where The Comedian Learns How To Be A Farmer After Moving To Ontario appeared first on Decider.
