This Is a Gardening Show Season 1 Review: Zach Galifianakis Grows a Surprisingly Charming Netflix Gem

Zach Galifianakis has built a career on discomfort, deadpan timing, and the kind of oddball comic rhythm that can turn a pause into a punchline. That is exactly why This Is a Gardening Show feels so unexpected at first glance—and so winning once it settles in. In this low-key, quietly funny first season, Galifianakis steps away from his usual comic chaos and into a world of soil, seeds, orchards, compost, and conversation. The result is not a glossy how-to series or a celebrity vanity project. It is something much softer, stranger, and more sincere.

From its opening moments, the show establishes a tone of deliberate humility. Galifianakis does not present himself as a master gardener or some lifestyle guru eager to instruct the audience. Instead, he plays the curious visitor: a longtime gardening enthusiast who knows enough to ask interesting questions but is smart enough not to pretend he knows everything. That choice gives the entire season its charm. Rather than centering expertise in the host, the series shines a light on the people who actually grow food, tend greenhouses, manage compost, and carry agricultural knowledge forward.

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The structure is simple but effective. Across six short episodes, each one loosely centered on a crop or gardening theme, Galifianakis visits growers and agricultural workers, listening more than lecturing. He samples apples, talks tomatoes, wanders through cornfields, and learns the small practical details that make farming feel both tangible and essential. The series is especially good at capturing the pleasure of process: the way an apple is picked, how compost is balanced, why certain tomato varieties matter, or what makes a root vegetable ready for harvest.

That unhurried attention is the show’s greatest strength. In an era when so much nonfiction television is overproduced, hyper-edited, and desperate to manufacture stakes, This Is a Gardening Show is content to let viewers simply watch people who care deeply about what they do. There is something refreshing about a series that trusts curiosity to be enough.

More than a gardening show, this feels like a series about respect: respect for work, for knowledge, for food, and for the people who make everyday abundance possible.

Galifianakis is a surprisingly effective guide through that world. He keeps the mood playful without undermining the material, and his awkward, self-effacing persona works beautifully here. He is funny, but never in a way that turns the farmers into props for jokes. If anything, the series repeatedly emphasizes how delighted he is by other people’s competence. That generosity gives the show warmth. His presence opens the door, but the people he meets are the reason the series lingers in the mind.

Some of the most memorable scenes involve children, whose appearances give the show an even looser and more spontaneous energy. Their conversations with Galifianakis often drift into absurd or unexpectedly honest territory, and those moments help the series avoid becoming too precious. The children are unimpressed when they need to be, funny without trying too hard, and naturally curious in a way that mirrors the show’s broader mission. Their scenes also reinforce one of the season’s quiet themes: agricultural knowledge has to be passed down, shared, and kept alive.

Underneath the gentle humor, the series carries a real concern about the future of farming and food production. It never turns preachy, and that restraint is part of what makes it effective. The show is clearly aware that fewer people feel connected to the labor behind what they eat, and it nudges viewers to consider that disconnect without scolding them. Instead of delivering a heavy-handed message, it asks simple questions that stay with you: Who grows our food? Who will do this work in the future? What knowledge are we in danger of losing?

Season 1 highlights

• Galifianakis’ easy rapport with growers and farm workers
• A wonderfully relaxed rhythm that makes even simple tasks feel absorbing
• Funny, offbeat conversations with children that keep the tone unpredictable
• A subtle but sincere appreciation for agricultural labor and climate-conscious growing

Not every choice works equally well. The animated “fun fact” segments can feel slightly intrusive, as though the show momentarily loses confidence in its own natural appeal and reaches for extra explanation. They are not disastrous, but they are less interesting than the human interactions, which are the true heart of the series. Whenever the show pauses to let someone explain their craft, demonstrate a method, or simply talk about why they love what they do, it becomes far more engaging than any informational insert could make it.

Comparisons to shows like How To with John Wilson or Joe Pera Talks with You are understandable. Like those series, This Is a Gardening Show finds humor in specificity and gentleness in observation. It is not quite as formally inventive as the former or as emotionally precise as the latter, but it has a personality all its own. Its pleasures are modest, and that modesty is part of the point. This is a show interested less in dazzling you than in quietly reorienting your attention toward things you may not have considered valuable enough to notice.

In the end, that is what makes Season 1 so appealing. It is not trying to become the definitive gardening series, and it does not need to be. It succeeds as a funny, thoughtful, deeply likable celebration of people who know how to grow things—and of a host wise enough to admit he still has plenty to learn. By the final episode, the show leaves behind more than a few practical facts. It leaves a feeling: that food is miraculous, that expertise is worth admiring, and that spending time with people who care deeply about the land can be unexpectedly moving.

If Netflix viewers discover it, This Is a Gardening Show could easily become one of those small but beloved series people recommend with a kind of protective affection. It may be slight in scale, but it is rich in personality, warmth, and purpose. Sometimes that is more than enough.