Sarah Lancashire continues to be the crème de la crème
As last year was proclaimed the year of the cooking drama, with The Bear and Boiling Point serving up regular treats, no one seemed to notice that we already had an excellent chef show. This was Julia (Sky Atlantic), HBO’S story of the American “French Chef ” Julia Child that somehow combined the period perfection of Mad Men with the drooling food photography of “Bearing Point”. To that it added a Lessons in Chemistry animus of women doing things for themselves that useless men couldn’t, and a performance in the lead from Sarah Lancashire that, put alongside her work as Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley, wiped the floor with her contemporaries.
The second series began with Julia in holiday mode after the success of her first TV series and book, gallivanting from French market to bistro and, in her words, being “intoxicated by France”. Naturally, as she is floored by Loup en Croûte and works on recipes for her second book, the TV network back in the States are desperate for her return to film series two of The French Chef.
Indeed, one of the many pleasures of Julia is its depiction of how television (then and now) is so disdainful of potential stars until it chances upon one – and then it goes from dismissive to greedy in an instant. “Now that we have something we want more something and less nothing,” says the WGBH TV exec, with the writers surely giving a nod and a wink to their current employers.
Season two of Julia is a route map through the flowering and consequent travails of celebrity, as Julia-mania goes from a simmer to a hard boil, even taking her to the White House and the realms of press intrusion into her relationship with husband Paul (David Hyde Pierce).
It is a toothsome treat throughout, with the only caveat being the question of how much Julia you want in Julia. On the one hand, Lancashire’s performance is starter, main course and dessert, and so when we follow, for example, producer Alice’s (Brittany Bradford) struggles to be heard, we also hanker for Lancashire’s beaming visage and ludicrously long vowels.
But then the writers recognise that Julia’s story is also one of post-war America and anyway, you can’t luxuriate over the make-up of a chicken cassoulet (which should be goose, Julia’s French friend insists) for too long without turning your TV series into a cookery show. Broadly speaking, Julia series two – like great French cuisine – gets the balance right. Benji Wilson
‘Right, you all know the recipe for a travel show,” James May says at the beginning of Our Man in India (Amazon Prime Video), which raises the hope that he might be about to do something radical. Instead, he treads the same path as everyone else. He even has a local stand-up comedian as a guide, which is what Al Murray did in his Indian travelogue three months ago. The key, though, is that May does it all in his trademark style (bewildered Englishman, resigned to losing his dignity), which makes him entertaining company.
The entertainment is derived from May’s reactions to everything going on around him, whether that be the traffic – kudos to him for cycling through Udaipur with its crazy roundabouts – or the luxury train, where at 9am “the bar is absolutely banging” with Brits.
The programme touches on colonialism, because everything does nowadays – the Indian comedian notes with amusement that British people are far more troubled by it than Indians are – but May doesn’t go in for hand-wringing despite describing himself as “a bleeding heart Western liberal”. Gazing at Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial, he says: “It must be said that in this bit of India it’s quite difficult to shake off the legacy of Empire… but let’s give it a go.”
Later he dispenses some words of advice to prospective travellers: “Don’t think you’re going to live out some ‘Last Days of the Raj’ fantasy because modern India is far more interesting.” We’re a long way from the 2012 Top Gear special in India, which sparked a diplomatic row when the presenters were accused of lacking cultural sensitivity. Also, this is going out on a global platform and will probably have more viewers in India than the UK.
May’s musings are themselves far more interesting than the scenes in which he is required to take part in various activities, Generation Gamestyle, such as making a spicy shepherd’s pie or some clay pots. They drag. The producers should just have let him wander about and give in to the chaos. As he observes here: “If you’re a foreigner, India always seems to be trying to beat you up.” Anita Singh
Julia ★★★★
James May: Our Man In India ★★★