Vojta Kotek's farm: how an actor builds a real farm for a TV show

The second season of the reality show “Vojta Kotek’s Farm” begins on Prima TV on Friday, 23 October at 8:15 p.m., and will be available on the prima+ platform a week earlier. The actor is finishing the house on his farm in Kozarovice, where he lives with his family, while trying to turn a TV project into a real working farm.

On Thursday, 24 September, at two in the afternoon, Kozarovice in the Příbram district turned into one big car park: visitors’ cars lined the whole village, and the hall of the local community centre was packed. Farmers’ markets with local traders were held there; vegetables from Kotek’s farm were on sale, alongside T-shirts, socks and other items with his brand. Just as the market began, a downpour hit outside. “Finally, rain. We’ve finally got it,” Kotek said from the stage in his work clothes and his hat: after the drought, he said, a farmer couldn’t wish for better weather. He then showed the audience a montage from the second season.

It was raining during the journalists’ visit to the farm as well: carrots were being harvested for the market, large roots pulled out of wet soil. The film crew handed out green raincoats with the show’s logo and the words “I hear a train — it’s going to rain!” — a line from Mr. Kavka, familiar to viewers from the first season. Thus, alongside real work, a television brand grows in the field: quotes from the show are printed on clothing, and the characters’ faces on the market poster. Next to Kotek on it are his wife Radana and their four-year-old son Hubert.

The Czech Clarkson at a different stage

Kotek is not the first celebrity to let cameras onto his land. British presenter Jeremy Clarkson, for many years the face of the car show Top Gear, shows in the documentary series “Clarkson’s Farm” how he learns to farm and how rain, drought and crop failure wreck his plans. The costs, setbacks and disputes around the farm become the plot of the episodes.

Fans of this story, now five years old, travel straight to the farm: at the Diddly Squat shop you can buy Clarkson’s products and goods from local suppliers. Some of his products even reached Amazon Fresh stores — the series is made for Amazon Prime Video. Clarkson’s influence is wider still: Britain’s Royal Agricultural University recorded an 11 percent year-on-year rise in applications to its rural land management programme, and a representative links the increased interest in the subject partly to the success of Clarkson’s farm.

For Kotek’s family, Clarkson is more than a point of comparison. In an earlier interview, Radana Kotková said she adores his farm and similar shows. According to her, she is also the one who nudged her husband to combine work in front of the camera with life at home: “Let’s bring it here, otherwise you’ll always be running off to film shoots and we’ll never see each other again.”

The Czech project is still at the start of its journey. Kotek first set up his everyday life, repaired a caravan and began keeping hens and sheep. Last year he sold scarves made from the wool of his own sheep; at this year’s markets he also brought vegetables. He plans to sell his own eggs at the markets too, while blankets from sheep’s wool are still in preparation. “It’s not just merch anymore,” he says.

It is in money that the Czech Clarkson differs most from the British one. Clarkson inherited a running farm and can turn its seasonal profits and losses into a storyline. Kotek is only building his. He did not name specific investments, revenue, profit or losses; according to him, agricultural income is nowhere near comparable to Clarkson’s for now. He discussed with the makers whether to show more figures in the show, but at the moment could mainly tell viewers about the costs of setting up the farm.

For now, “Vojta Kotek’s Farm” works mostly as a warm family story. The first season had nine episodes: Kotek battled Kozarovice granite, problems with the hens and a sheep illness, from which one animal even died. By his earlier account, he spent 106 filming days on the farm with a small team. The second season will show how he finishes the house, and return to the mistakes of the first year and the attempts to farm in an environmentally friendly way. Kotek wants to meet the conditions for entering the transition period before possible certification, so the farm cannot yet be called organic: even the market poster thanks guests for supporting the path toward it.

Who pays for the show and what the farm earns

The farm has a second economy as well — a television one. Kotek himself, together with his team, works out how partners’ products and services will appear in scenes of his work; those scenes, he says, should grow out of the farm’s real needs.

In the first season the partners were Bauhaus, Bobcat, ČEZ, Vodafone, Billa and Toyota. Toyota said it provided two cars for filming. This is not only product placement, where a logo flashes in the frame: Kotek builds advertising campaigns straight into the story. For example, the salesman from the hobby-market ad, played by Zdeněk Harvat, crossed over into the series — he appears already in the first episode. That way, scenes with a well-known advertising character are woven into the story of Kotek’s real farm, and the question arises where documentary filming of farm life ends and a paid advertising campaign written for the camera begins.

“Most often it goes like this: we want something and approach people to see whether they’d like to make it a collaboration,” Kotek says of choosing partners. He also receives offers to promote other companies’ products, he says, and has turned some down. He knew Bauhaus from earlier advertising cooperation: the land for the farm had already been bought, and he himself then suggested the hobby market take part in the new TV project.

The show also supplies content to Prima and its streaming service. The channel counts it among the most-watched projects of prima+ paying users, where about another 200,000 viewers watch the episodes.

The Kozarovice market will appear in the seventh episode of the second season. It shows Kotek’s business model more clearly than any spreadsheet: carrots or onions that a beginner farmer grew himself lie next to a T-shirt with his farm’s logo. Kotek adds that he tries to balance merch sales with his own farm produce.

Who decides what to show about the family

The show rests not only on the farm’s work and products. Kotek’s family appears on screen too, and that raises the question of who sets the boundaries of its private life.

Kotek says he usually doesn’t post individual moments of his personal life on social media, and a serial narrative makes more sense to him. To decide himself what from family life reaches the screen, he insisted on producing and directing the project himself: in television he needed “the absolute right to decide.” The crew consists of several close friends. What else is acceptable to show he judges by his own instinct; the channel, he says, does not push him to reveal personal matters.

This includes footage of four-year-old Hubert. Asked whether his son might one day dislike taking part in the series, the actor replies: “I can never rule that out.” He adds that the boy is filmed when he himself wants to be around and do something: “We don’t force him into anything.” Kotek believes that, because of his father’s profession, his son will face public attention anyway, and trusts that later they will be able to talk about the filming.

But a four-year-old’s wish to be with his parents on set does not settle the question of his future attitude to publicly available footage. UNICEF points out that a small child cannot give informed consent to the publication of his image. As Seznam Zprávy also wrote recently, with repeated posting of children’s photos and videos, the issue is not only that a child may one day feel ashamed of them: individual shots can together reveal details of his daily life. A TV series works differently from parents’ social media posts, but before publication it raises the same question: what exactly do the shots reveal about the child, and how long will they stay available?

Kotek did not say how he would act if Hubert later refused further filming or wanted old footage removed. Today the decisions are made by the parents, but a television recording can follow a child long after he has outgrown his role in the show.

Kotek would like to continue with a third season, but there is no decision yet. “We’ll see how it goes,” he concludes.

Around Prague, based on reporting by seznamzpravy.cz