TV REVIEW: The RestaurantRTÉ1, Sunday Raymond Blanc's Kitchen SecretsBBC2, Monday The Delicious Miss DahlBBC2, Tuesday Grow your own drugsBBC2, Tuesday Impact: Death on Irish Roads TV3, Sunday Arts Lives: John Connolly, Of Blood and Lost ThingsRTÉ1, Tuesday
AFTER A WHOLE series of
At Your Service
, where hotelier Francis Brennan arrived at the doorsteps of various hotels and B&Bs trailing his dinky little suitcase on wheels and pronouncing everything from the swirly carpets to the potted plants to be out of date, he finally got his comeuppance this week.
As the guest chef in The Restaurant, which returned for a new series, he was told by the resident chef Stephen that his ambitious menu was old-fashioned. "I hate to keep saying '80s," said Stephen a little smugly, which was clearly untrue because he said it several times as he eyed the salmon roulade and then the weird blob of meringue floating in wine soup.
“If you eat off your knife again I’ll talk to you outside,” cautioned Brennan during the tasting session in the kitchen – pretending to be all Miss Manners but really marking the younger chef’s card.
Retro or not, Brennan camped it up for the camera, the perfect guest chef to kick off the series. In this show, the most entertaining bits tend to be when people talk about the food, because there’s simply no way to talk about a dinner – or, worse still, wine – without sounding like a total eejit.
“This piece here,” said judge Paulo Tullio, brandishing a sliver of meat, “if you put it in your mouth, you’ll spit it out” – which rather begs the question where else you’d be putting a piece of Parma ham.
The ham was judged to be “rancid”, which isn’t hip foodie speak for horrible; he really meant gone off, although that didn’t stop Brennan bagging a four-star rating for his meal.
DAFT AS SOMEof the pronouncements were, at least you could understand them, which is more than could be said for the cooking instructions in the unintentionally hilarious Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets. Blanc is a UK-based French chef who has won a galaxy-full of Michelin stars but for reasons best known to his Gallic heart (well, if Jamie, Gordon etc can . . .) he fancied doing a bit of telly, a medium for which his impenetrable accent and style of cooking is totally unsuited. It'd take more than a series of half-hour programmes to teach anyone how to do the complex and very haute cuisine he specialises in. The "sozz you can mek easily at 'ome," involved having a pheasant carcass handy. It was about the only one of Blanc's instructions that didn't require subtitles. Many "voilàs" later he pronounced "my God it's lovely" as he tasted one of his own dishes. Not shy, that Raymond.
For the pheasant pithivier and the sauce, he first had to shoot his own pheasant. To limber up, he went duck shooting, but, although the ducks were flying at about the same speed as the ones that used to decorate Hilda Ogden's wall in Corrie, he missed every time. At the pheasant shoot, where the birds basically painted targets on their breasts before circling over his head, he eventually managed to shoot one: "Look, in the 'ed."
One to watch next week for the sheer theatrics of it all.
ONE TO MISSis Nigella-wannabe Sophie Dahl and her The Delicious Miss Dahl.The model-turned-writer is as posh as Nigella, does that same flirty, googly-eye thing, says "heavenly" a lot and talks about "fantasising" about mozzarella – all of which is enough to make you run screaming out of her achingly styled kitchen. Though of course it isn't her kitchen at all; despite the cosy needlepoint on the wall and homely stuff stuck on the fridge, it's in an empty showhouse somewhere in London – though we're probably not supposed to know that. The whole thing, from the retro enamel teapot to the 1950s florals fabrics, is art-directed to within an inch of its self-conscious life and is a throwback to those lifestyle programmes that used to pepper the schedules.
The schtick is that in each episode Dahl will create a menu to reflect a mood, starting with “selfishness”. What that meant was posh cooking for one and not, she purred, “selfish, like taking the last brownie from the mouths of starving children” – a curious insight into third world food aid programmes. “The job of cooking for one person is you can afford to get that particularly precious goldmine of food,” she said, as she handled some mouldy but expensive cheese in her local speciality shop, her diamond ring, with its rock the size of Gibraltar, flashing in the sunlight somewhat undermining her repeated references to frugality.
WAY MOREin tune with the make do and mend, thrifty mood is Grow your own Drugs, in which ethnobotanist James Wong raids his mesmerisingly beautiful herb garden to create all sorts of natural remedies. His last series spawned a book of the same name which I noticed was a mega-seller on Amazon for ages. I'd like to think there was more than one buyer bitterly disappointed to discover recipes such as the one for Four Winds Tea for flatulence instead of something the local head shop might be peddling. Talk of Blanc's pheasant pithivier or Dahl's cheesy fantasies didn't propel me off the sofa and into action, but, after a winter of holey jumpers and well-fed moths, Wong's recipe for moth repellent had me foraging around the garden for rosemary, sage and wormwood.
GAY BYRNEwas back on screen with Impact, a new series about death on our roads. "This is not a happy programme," he began (Byrne handled the introductions and a forthright voiceover), and what followed was the personal stories of families who had lost young people in road traffic accidents. Pain was etched on the faces of the mothers and fathers as they recalled the knock on the door in the early hours of the morning or the visit to the morgue.
TD Jim McDaid, who got into his car when drunk and drove the wrong way down a dual carriageway, was interviewed. Recalling the night, he acknowledged the chaos he could have caused and said, somewhat bizarrely, “I’d probably feel better if I’d killed someone rather than maiming someone.”
Self-pity and contrition mingled as he recounted the details of the night. “He did not resign,” said Byrne dryly with his trademark sigh, his tone suggesting that McDaid’s penalty of a two-year driving ban and a €750 fine was paltry and that enforcement and legal sanctions or lack thereof is part of the problem.
tvreview@irishtimes.com
An impressive catalogue of crime: The unassuming Irishman who has spooked 10 million readers
Crime writer John Connolly is so low-key you'd pass him in the street, yet he's one of our most internationally successful writers, his 12 scary and compelling novels ratcheting up sales of over 10 million copies. Not a single one is based in Ireland (disqualifying him, he knows, in some people's view, from being regarded as an "Irish writer"); most are set in Maine, where he spends a large part of the year and this beautifully crafted Arts Livesdocumentary followed him there as he discussed his methods and motivation.
It was an intimate film showing glimpses of his life, from his boyhood bedroom in Crumlin to the room in his house in Dublin where he works. The programme was a treat for crime fans, with genre heavyweights including Laura Lippman, George Pelecanos, David Simon and Declan Hughes talking about Connolly’s work while the writer himself came across as open, questioning and unaffected. His first novel, written when he was a freelance journalist with The Irish Times, was the subject of a publishers’ bidding war and sold for well over £1 million (and “he isn’t even a good journalist”, he recalled a “colleague” remarking at the time – ouch).
Above all, what was clear from his story was that writing is work – and hard work at that. The first 5,000 words come as if by magic, the next 95,000, “every one of them a little bullet of perspiration,” and then it is rewrite and rewrite.
It was a superbly stylish, atmospheric documentary, facts about Connolly written on screen in a spooky style that suited the crime theme. And it was insightful in the way it explored the writer’s work and the genre he works in. If this is the calibre of what’s to come in the series, set the timer.
