The series consists of six 15-minute episodes that blend education with entertainment. Each episode begins with interviews with children, including a true or false game about apple varieties in the opening installment. The show features small animated tracts offering historical lessons about produce and uses time-lapse photography to demonstrate growth processes. The interviews with children are a smart move that proves endlessly charming, with the children invariably falling in love with Galifianakis.
Galifianakis embarks on various gardening adventures throughout the series, drawing from his personal experience of starting to grow peanuts when he moved to Los Angeles. He visits a tomato farm, meets a composting expert, and goes foraging. The meat of the gardening information happens when Galifianakis meets experts, including a grizzled corn farmer named Murray who uses profanities. It's hard not to hang on every word of the composting expert due to her joy, and Galifianakis gets excited to play along when experts out themselves as tricky characters. Murray's profanities instantly undermine Galifianakis's thesis that gardening makes everyone happier.
Red delicious? Sausage fingers? Diarrhoea town?
The show is directed by Brook Linder, who previously directed 'Everybody's Live With John Mulaney' last year. Production details emphasize the series' concise format and visual storytelling approach.
Multiple reports indicate the author of a Guardian article grew up watching 'Gardeners' World' as mandated by their father but found it dull, feeling their life force draining away when its theme tune came on. The author believes 'This Is a Gardening Show' could have made things different if it had been around during their childhood.
Will this devastate my bowels?
The author asserts that 'This Is a Gardening Show' feels like the perfect programme at moments, describing it as part lesson, part lark, and part warning. The show has a deliriously light touch that makes you want to run outside and plunge your hands into the soil, and Galifianakis manages to locate the sweet spot for the curious beginner. The sheer charm of the series cannot be ignored despite toilet talk, with the author describing it as feeling like a funnier, grumpier Sesame Street.
It's hard to imagine a better host for this show than Zach Galifianakis. The author says it is a joy to see Galifianakis self-deprecatingly beat himself up for not knowing horticultural methods.
Several aspects of the show's content remain unclear. The series does not specify what types of tomatoes are most likely to survive the climate crisis, nor does it detail the historical lessons covered in the animated tracts. The time-lapse photography's specific demonstration of how quickly you can eat what you plant is not fully explained. The show includes a segment called 'Bobbing for Turds,' but its full content and outcome are not revealed. Additionally, beyond the tomato farm, composting expert, and foraging expedition, other experts or locations Galifianakis visits are not specified.