TV Obesity...

So....





It's been a while. Just over two years to be exact. Hope you didn't decide to starve yourself in anticipation assuming the next post was around the corner. You did?? Well, sorry about that. Anyway here I am to satisfy and salivate, View and Review... hopefully I'll stick around a lot longer than I did the first time, if not for you then for the kids... #IDigress.

Disclaimer: I don't have kids.

The other day I was sitting comfortably at home, wife beater on and Supermalt in tow, when I saw an advert for yet ANOTHER televisual cooking extravaganza. Now the foodie in me, (channel your inner foodie with me, thought awesome more daytime food porn to enjoy. Being an avid lover of Masterchef in all its forms, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Hell's Kitchen, Come Dine With Me, The F Word, The Naked Chef, Top Chef, Ready, Steady... OK that's an extreme, but you get the picture you can imagine my initial delight when yet another TV teaser was ready to fulfill my imaginary cooking talents.

But then I got that feeling... you know the feeling you get at a Chinese Buffet when you know you like it but you can't take anymore. The feeling that if you take another bite, you may feel physically sick... and yet someone still swoops along with a menu asking sinisterly, with an evil smirk on their face '' Sir, would you like to see the dessert menu?" as if to tempt and torture me into a fate close to oblivion (In my head anyway). This show was that dessert.

Now I fully understand the attraction of televisual food showmanship. The demonstration of what is essentially an art form that can physically as well as intellectually edify. The chief example coming in the latest series of MasterChef the Professionals, where the standard of ability and talent on display were beyond even the evident perceptions of the Judges Michel Roux Jr and Gregg Wallace. This years show eventually been won by Aussie Ash Mair in the best cookery cook off final I can recall in living memory. (Is there any other type of memory besides living? #Idigress) Art is inherently a passion, cooking at these levels is an art and therefore art demands an audience. Understood and moreover deserved.

The question is have we reached an epidemic of such foodie proportions that even a Jamie Oliver campaign is beyond it's reach? Is even food on a screen a slave to the human elements of Boom and Bust? Food is becoming the latest vice in a long line of over exposed and over saturated televisual phases which have included the zenith's of genre's including Big Brother style shows and Pop Idol like contests. Well if it is destined for the same fate, at least it's content extends to a substance greater than the aforementioned genre's.

At some point someone, somewhere out there in the big bad world of television has to know their limits at the table, and realise when enough is truly enough. Was the Arrest today for a well known celebrity chef for the theft of Cheese from a Tesco's just the start? An indicator of just where this ship is sailing?? What could be next? Jamie Oliver and Gordan Ramsay teaming up to Loot a Morrison's? Ainsley Harriet stuffing aprons into his rucksack in Asda?? It could happen. Either way it does feel that the pendulum for over saturation has possibly swung too far one way and risks the inevitable cheapening of a quite beautiful, ye even historic industry.

For now I will continue to enjoy bearing witness to a golden age of onscreen and off screen cooking, raising the interest and capability of those who enjoy cooking to levels which we the paying public feel privileged to indulge. The pallet is now far more educated and the mind more than ever informed. The hope is that this Renaissance of the kitchen isn't polished off all too soon in the media's well developed taste for a quick buck. Let's hope and Pray, 2012 isn't the year Television gets the "ITIS."

Channeling our Inner Foodies on three...


Bon Appetite!