Review of Cooked

Although this series starts with the interesting techniques of a group of Aborigines in Australia, there really is little new or interesting, or even that factual in this documentary and the show degenerates in to a smarmy, upper class, preach about the perils of not cooking properly. Yes people eat too much junk food, that much is clear, but to generate enough time of an hour cooking every day for a lot of people is just not realistic and the whole thing seems out of touch with reality. In an ideal world we'd all sit around with a source of a thousand, organic, fresh ingredients, but there are ways to do this without going back in to the past completely.

At times the narrator and presenter produces some of the most general sweeping statements about food culture in the world and often seems to think that "the West" actually means "America".

The food is pretty good to look at, but there's not a whole lot of interesting or different dishes in there. The presenter says a couple of times things like "Oh, you're doing what the French call 'XXXXX' and you didn't even know the name! That's fantastic!" which is just about as patronizing as you get.

It's a shame. The most interesting person in the show was probably the food expert, Harry Balzer. He actually had something interesting to say that was aside from all the misty-eyed, 'it used to be better a hundred years ago' jargon, patronizing, preachy advice etc that we're left with.

Good message, shame about the packaging and content.