Self-indulgence
Feb. 10th, 2012 10:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI don't watch much television, and what I do see tends to be a little random - which is the best explanation I can offer for why I am watching the BBC's Raymond Blanc: The Very Hungry Frenchman.
The basic premise is: here is Raymond Blanc, very famous French chef whose career has been built exclusively in England: why not send him to cook in France? I wonder whose the original idea was. Did Raymond Blanc say "I could take a paid holiday at home, if you will fund me to make three programmes in French locations of my choice"? Or did the producer offer the choice of locations to persuade the chef into the semblance of a reality show (chef takes over local restaurant and cooks one gala dinner: but will the locals be impressed?*) If the whole thing were funded by the French Tourist Board, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Sam Wollaston, over at the Guardian is not impressed: "It's lovely – for Raymond," he says. "I'm a little bored, to be honest. And do we really need another, self-indulgent, celebrity chef food programme?" Which is entirely fair - and yet, it seems, I do, because I am enjoying it. Admittedly, it's an enjoyment seasoned with a fair amount of irritation: there's a narrative voice - an Englishwoman - which I find patronising and rather repetitive. Blanc's persona has genuine charm, but does he have to lay on the Gallic charm quite so thick (I'm prepared to believe that he does naturally say "Oh, la la!" all the time, but the choice of a 2CV for his travels - a different one with local registration plates in each of the two episodes I have so far seen - is trying too hard)?
It's my constant complaint of tv documentaries that they are too superficial, that they are afraid of boring their audience and so they refrain from going into the level of detail that is precisely the thing I find interesting. Since I'm interested in France and its food (and wines), in this case, the information withheld is quite often something I know, so there's quite a lot of heckling (which is an irritation, but part of the fun, too). Raymond Blanc's twist on the Franche Comtoise speciality of rabbit with mustard is to cook it in the local vin jaune - but they don't mention what that stuff costs**. The rhapsody about the charms of Beaune doesn't mention the city's best known feature, the hospices - but wait, that shot of typical Burgundian roof tiles, isn't that...? And so on.
I don't mind. I'm happy to sit back and watch the 2CV bouncing through the vineyards, the racks of maturing comté cheeses stretching away to infinity in the Fort Saint Antoine (scroll down), the elegant little black pigs, the two trainees from Blanc's restaurant in England who accompany him and help with the cooking, exclusively English-speaking apart from the "Oui, chef" with which they receive his instructions, the mustard seeds pouring into the mill...
The first programme took Raymond Blanc home to the Franche Comté, which is less over-exposed than - well, than Burgundy, say, scene of the second programme. There were scenes with his mother which were not as cloying as they might have been (or perhaps my tolerance is high). So on balance I liked the first show better. The third and last takes us to Lyon, to the big city, and I'm not enthusiastic about this prospect. But I'll be there.
*Well, what do you think? Of course they will.
**I've never tasted vin jaune: the Wine Society lists only one example, which at £34 a bottle is out of stock.
The basic premise is: here is Raymond Blanc, very famous French chef whose career has been built exclusively in England: why not send him to cook in France? I wonder whose the original idea was. Did Raymond Blanc say "I could take a paid holiday at home, if you will fund me to make three programmes in French locations of my choice"? Or did the producer offer the choice of locations to persuade the chef into the semblance of a reality show (chef takes over local restaurant and cooks one gala dinner: but will the locals be impressed?*) If the whole thing were funded by the French Tourist Board, I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Sam Wollaston, over at the Guardian is not impressed: "It's lovely – for Raymond," he says. "I'm a little bored, to be honest. And do we really need another, self-indulgent, celebrity chef food programme?" Which is entirely fair - and yet, it seems, I do, because I am enjoying it. Admittedly, it's an enjoyment seasoned with a fair amount of irritation: there's a narrative voice - an Englishwoman - which I find patronising and rather repetitive. Blanc's persona has genuine charm, but does he have to lay on the Gallic charm quite so thick (I'm prepared to believe that he does naturally say "Oh, la la!" all the time, but the choice of a 2CV for his travels - a different one with local registration plates in each of the two episodes I have so far seen - is trying too hard)?
It's my constant complaint of tv documentaries that they are too superficial, that they are afraid of boring their audience and so they refrain from going into the level of detail that is precisely the thing I find interesting. Since I'm interested in France and its food (and wines), in this case, the information withheld is quite often something I know, so there's quite a lot of heckling (which is an irritation, but part of the fun, too). Raymond Blanc's twist on the Franche Comtoise speciality of rabbit with mustard is to cook it in the local vin jaune - but they don't mention what that stuff costs**. The rhapsody about the charms of Beaune doesn't mention the city's best known feature, the hospices - but wait, that shot of typical Burgundian roof tiles, isn't that...? And so on.
I don't mind. I'm happy to sit back and watch the 2CV bouncing through the vineyards, the racks of maturing comté cheeses stretching away to infinity in the Fort Saint Antoine (scroll down), the elegant little black pigs, the two trainees from Blanc's restaurant in England who accompany him and help with the cooking, exclusively English-speaking apart from the "Oui, chef" with which they receive his instructions, the mustard seeds pouring into the mill...
The first programme took Raymond Blanc home to the Franche Comté, which is less over-exposed than - well, than Burgundy, say, scene of the second programme. There were scenes with his mother which were not as cloying as they might have been (or perhaps my tolerance is high). So on balance I liked the first show better. The third and last takes us to Lyon, to the big city, and I'm not enthusiastic about this prospect. But I'll be there.
*Well, what do you think? Of course they will.
**I've never tasted vin jaune: the Wine Society lists only one example, which at £34 a bottle is out of stock.
