Reviews

Quite frankly, it is embarrassing to watch.

The English participants make embarrassing attempts to speak French, and seem to expect the French people to speak English!

I very frequently visit one of the featured towns, l'Isle sur Sorgues, and find the people helpful and polite, as the program shows, but the programme does nothing for the reputation of the English who make little or no effort to converse in the language of the country they are visiting.

I understand this is for the uk market, but subtitles could have been used alongside English participants speaking French.

This programme shows why schools should teach languages!

Look how disadvantaged they are.

Having worked as a Chef in Claridges, the Savoy, Buckingham Palace and more, I feel I am qualified to say this programme is wildly inaccurate, displays unhygienic practices, with totally unhygienic dress/uniform. I could write pages on just how this programme displayed nothing of the calm professionalism that is part of any classical cuisine.

It seems all TV producers want to fabricate drama and arrogance in the kitchen, which of course in some places does exist, but in the sadly few professionally run Hotel and Restaurant kitchens, there are still many dedicated, knowledgeable, Chefs.

I wonder if the producers of this programme had any real professional advice?

Ron Lee.

An excellent series, I will look for more like this because I love these programs that can be a little bit sad but also absolutely hilarious.

All the cast did a great job in this no holds barred comedy.

Some of our modern day so-called stand up comedy artist could learn a lot by watching this.

I'm looking to see what else she's done.

I've been going through some of the fantastic lines in it all day and can't wait to watch the next three episodes tonight.

The script writer also needs praise because I never got bored once with the script! And for some reason, the language never upset me at all, it was used in totally the right context.

The Irish emigrants were portrayed were with perfect hair, clean nails, clean, perfectly ironed clothes etc.

At this time the poor in Ireland had almost nothing, they washed in a bowl, probably with cold water, probably very rarely!

There is no way that the women's hair we saw, beautifully coiffured could ever be achieved.

The images we saw were far too "perfect", with the only reflection on reality was the burning of peat, and even that was done in a clinical environment!

This appears to have been produced by people who had no idea of the conditions in Ireland at that time. What a shame, could have been an interesting historical document.

Have watched other series, but in this one Portillo is toe curlingly condescending, spoils a good programme, and when not playing fancy dress, is he wearing some sort of incontinence device? Would love to watch more, but can't because of his presentation.

This is an insult to the original actors/writers. I turned it off after 10 minutes. I love comedies, but this didn't even raise a smile. Awful. Awful. Awful. All concerned should be ashamed of themselves.

I used to watch every day for some years, but recently, (September 2021) it has become boring and unwatchable

This would have been and eight star review apart from that awful woman Valerie Pitman.

There are some excellent stories, probably for about 70% of the time but there are also some awful stories all of them involving that stupid woman Valery Pitman who has no sensible work ethics I would fire her immediately if she worked for me, she's not even funny, just get rid of her.

But some absolutely excellent stories, but this woman spoils the series. I feel sorry for all the other excellent actors who are brought down by this woman .