Indulgent. Indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent indulgent. The Delicious Miss Dahl (BBC Two, Tuesday, 23 March, 8.30pm)
I bet there’s loads of you out there who watched Sophie Dahl‘s new cookery show and hooted and brayed in the most predictable way possible. SHE’S TOO GOOD LOOKING AND MAKES ME SICK! SHE’S NOT A PROPER CHEF! SHE’S JUST ANOTHER NIGELLA! WAAAH! WAAAAAAH! BOOOO! HIIIISSSS!
I personally don’t think Ms Dahl is all that impressive to look at (she reminds me a bit of that weird girl from the Playstation commercials in the ’90s) and who cares if she’s not a proper chef? Chefs are all, without exception, wankers. And another Nigella? Hardly. Nigella is a bumbling idiot who resides in a piggy bank surrounded by yapping fuckwits.
If there’s any criticism of Sophie Dahl, it’s her insistence of using the word ‘indulgent’ when really, food is one of the most boring things you can show on television.
You see, Food TV is pointless. Someone clever did a study which looked at what effect cookery shows had on the lives of the British public and the results showed something like 95% of Britons never made a single dish As Seen On TV.
So what’s the point in showing them?
Well, apart from the dicks who tell you that they’re passionate about food and thrill at sharing ‘their’ recipes (ie, one nicked from a cookbook, only with one different ingredient) with people who don’t want them, cookery shows are something to look at that, with any luck, is more interesting than casting an eye on the rest of the house you trudge around in, sulking at how it got so messy.
As such, Sophie Dahl’s show works very well. Of course, she’s saccharine and coos at the most staggeringly pointless things (in one instance, a yellow aubergine)… but aside from that, she goes about her business in a way that’s mildly entertaining – a bit like watching tarmac bubbling in the sun.
Naturally, Dahl is an Englishman’s wet-dream. She’s a bit hockey-sticks but with added filth. When she purrs about some stupid food or other, you can almost imagine her talking dirty to some bloke on the phone, saying “I’ve been ever so naughty. Are you going to discipline me?”
Seeing as she’s peeling a vegetable, that can be a bit weird… but TV is weird and food shows are stupid. Fact is, whilst most television foodies look like the kind of people you’d want to punch in the throat at a dinner party, Sophie Dahl seems charming enough. You’d have to wade past the lovey-ness, but you get the impression that she’d be a welcoming enough host who expected little more than an appetite and decent chat in return.
And I guess that’s the mark of a food show worth watching. Nigella looks like the kind of person who would cackle you into submission and bludgeon you with the amount of forks on show. Sophie meanwhile would play you her crap folk records and drop her pudding on the floor. And she has the bonus of not having Nigel Lawson for a dad. You would have to put up with Jamie Cullum though so, swings and roundabouts I suppose.
In short: This is a food programme that’s about as useful to your kitchen as Location Location Location is to your living arrangements. Throwaway fluff that’s easy on the eye, if a little sickly at times.
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