What to watch
Rome Unpacked BBC TWO, 9.00PM; WALES, 9.30PM
“I cannot imagine anything in life better to do than this,” says the chef Giorgio Locatelli as he speeds around Rome on a Vespa with art critic Andrew Graham-dixon. Here, they return for another of their Italian jaunts, this time taking in the culture and cooking of the Italian capital, and its “divided, opinionated, passionate and unpredictable” inhabitants.
The pair make an engaging double act: effervescent, witty and knowledgeable. Their journey opens at Rome’s Capitoline Hill, the ancient meeting place of the “great and powerful and the mob”, where Grahamdixon and Locatelli marvel at the work of Michelangelo before visiting that magnificent display of papal showmanship, the Trevi fountain. “As famous as Italian cream,” says Graham-dixon, who adds that it was Federico Fellini who gave the fountain cinematic resonance in La Dolce Vita, before he explores how another artist, Caravaggio, captured the city’s soul.
Never far behind with a quip or insight, Locatelli comes into his own in the market of San Giovanni di Dio, where he prepares a staple Roman dish – skate with broccoli soup. “This is Rome,” says Grahamdixon. “Intenso.”
Simon Horsford