Thursday 18 December 2008

Sick of Christmas food programmes yet?

Well, we don't know about you but we're sick of the sight of food and Christmas hasn't even begun properly yet.
TV schedulers have gone a bit barmy with their festive food programmes this week.
First Nutty Nigella (Nigella's Christmas Kitchen, BBC2 Mon-Thurs) and her glamorous tagine feasts and deep freezers that "do all the hard work" when you're cooking. (Unfortunately, they don't trudge to Tesco in the rain and lug all the ingredients back home though, do they Nige?)
Then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall showed us what Christmas at River Cottage (C4, Weds) was all about.
Mostly shooting perfectly harmless deer by the looks of it. Very unnecessary.
And finding out how to make Brussels sprouts palatable to someone who doesn't like Brussels sprouts. By covering them with black pudding and deep frying, allegedly.
Common to both these programmes was a major scene where the host's friends would turn up for a mind blowing Christmas meal involving delicious food and wine and merry-making.
Husbands, wives and children did not appear to have been invited.
We imagined them cold and friendless, sitting in a room next door watching EastEnders while all the fun was going on so close to them.
Wives and children were, however, present in Willie's Perfect Chocolate Christmas (C4, Weds).
The Willie in question here being ever so eccentric Willie Harcourt-Cooze, a man who cannot stop thinking about chocolate ever.
Yeah? So what's so eccentric about that?
This was one of those slightly tongue-in-cheek Channel Four jobbies where we got to see the everyday family life of our hero - including scenes with his "long suffering" wife and "adorable" kids in their rambling country home.
It was obviously supposed to come across as an endearing look at the chaotic life of this maverick cook and the people who love him.
But in reality, it just came across as one big festival of utter smugness.
And there wasn't nearly enough chocolate...

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

It totally agree with the comment about Willie's latest oh so smug programme to promote his chocolate products using his family as supporting props. An utterly contrived production depicting a hugely privileged family making even more money out of selling cacao to unsuspecting consumers. Charmless Harcourt-Cooze is evidently self-obsessed and beneath the fluffy veneer runs a business using raw materials gathered by massively underpaid Venezuelan workers. dNext year comes a 3 part programme and book. Channel 4 could at least make an effort to conceal such blatant marketing. Absolutely worthless TV.