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Alison Rowat’s preview
ALISON ROWAT
LIKE the poster should have said, you don’t have to be mad to open a restaurant, but it helps. All those hard to satisfy mouths to feed; competition everywhere; the constant heat and noise of battle; and always, lurking in the shadows, the chance of Gordon Ramsay turning up one day and dispensing a rollocking.
As
begins it is early 2019 and the restaurant sector is already struggling. Even well-known names, such as Jamie Oliver, are under pressure.
Hoping to buck the trend is Nico Simeone, a 29-year-old Glaswegian who has come up with the idea of an affordable six-course tasting menu that changes every six weeks. He already has “Six by Nico” restaurants in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Now he wants to expand into Belfast, Manchester, Liverpool and London. The ultimate goal is taking the brand global.
Admirable ambition or unrealistic cockiness? Had it been anyone else you might have hoped for the latter. Documentaries work best, after all, when there is plenty of drama and a hero humbled. It would be a very boring piece if everything went according to plan and there were no tears or hissy fits before bedtime.
The kid, however, is such a likeable sort that you hope the restaurant gods give him a fair wind. Like the rest of his young team, Nico is gallus, can-do Glasgow in action. Roof leaking? He gets up there with a brush and blue roll. “Why not?” he says. “I would never expect anyone to do anything I wouldn’t do.”
There is of course drama waiting in the wings in this four-part series, but it has nothing to do with a shortage of dessert spoons. As the viewer knows, the coronavirus and the lockdown are on the way. Nico’s business model, which relies on packing as many tables in as possible, looks particularly vulnerable. Restaurants, who would have them these days?
If you are not already on board with Staged (BBC1, Wednesday) catch up quick because the final episodes arrive this week (the entire series is on iPlayer). I have probably watched more DIY, lockdown television than is good for a person. As with restaurateurs, you don’t have to be mad to be a TV critic, etc. But Simon Evans’ drama, in which he also stars, has been a pleasure.
The conceit is that David Tennant and Michael Sheen, firm
hombres who starred together recently in Good Omens, were about to start rehearsals for Pirandello’s Six Characters In Search Of An Author. Then lockdown came along, forcing them to prepare with director Evans by Zoom.
Tennant and Sheen play exaggerated versions of themselves, or themselves as we imagine them to be. So Sheen is vain, prickly, and liable to go off like a rocket at the teeniest slight. Tennant is equally in love with himself but there is an insecurity there besides. A born people pleaser, he found himself in a sticky spot in episode three when it emerged Samuel L Jackson, who was first choice for the part now taken by Sheen, found he could do the play after all.
The final episodes find the Sheen-Tennant relationship, and the play’s production, about to fall apart. An intervention is required, but who is grand enough to take on two such Everest-sized egos? You’ll be delighted to find out.
The chaps have been a hoot, and good to see them sharing screen time with their other halves as well as Nina Sosanya (W1A, Last Tango In Halifax)) as the play’s take no nonsense producer.
Subtle, silly, clever and amusing, Staged can come again after the virus has gone. But would it work? Assuming no-one is getting on planes any time soon, I imagine there will be lots of rehearsals for TV shows and films taking place online.
Having largely trashed lockdown TV in the preceding pars, I’m now about to recommend another helping. You don’t have to be consistent as a TV critic, but it would help, I know. Celebrity Supply Teacher (CBBC, Monday)
is a 20-part series in which famous folk do a 10-minute lesson in a subject of their choosing. Gary Lineker has taught Spanish, astronaut Tim Peake space rockets, and so on. This week finds Dame Darcey Bussell teaching an African dance from the comfort of her extremely large kitchen (how big? There’s an echo).
While that proves to be a giggle, the best bit is when the celeb takes questions from young viewers. One boy asks Darcey (who had to put on her specs to see the screen, love it), how long she could stay on her tiptoes. To accompany her answer there is a clip of Dame D en pointe and gliding across a stage as if on a carpet of air. Beat that, Lineker.
Nico’s Menu Mission, BBC Scotland, Thursday, 10pm; Staged, BBC1, Wednesday, 12.05am, 12.25am); Celebrity Supply Teacher, CBBC, Monday, 9.35am).