Kitchen Sink Drama
Posted at 9:14 am | Filed Under Popular, Programming, TV Shows
Nowhere on specialty TV do programmers work harder to cook up drama than Canada’s Food Network. Weeknights, you might witness a famous chef trying to burglar-proof her marriage with a chicken-salad sandwich or watch a “barbecue-ologist†create a modern caveman fantasy.
The Food Network began in 2000, but Canadian food shows have been around longer than that. In the early ’60s, Madame Jehane Benoit taught host Adrienne Clarkson how to clean a goose — use vinegar — on Take 30. Later, the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr, vaulted onto the TV kitchen scene, once opening a show by hurdling a chair with a goblet of wine and shouting, “Throw your breasts in the pans, ladies!†like a soused prince stumbling into a bawdy house.
Alas, old-style cooking and clowning don’t cut bread anymore, this television critic discovered, after taking a stroll through the modern food-TV universe. Today, it seems, food is drama and cooks’ lives are the main course. When it works, it’s very good; when it doesn’t, the results can be pretty unappetizing.
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