I used to love 1970s sitcom The Odd Couple. The casting of Jack Klugman as curmudgeonly Oscar Madison and Tony Randall as his clean-freak housemate Felix Unger was inspired. However, I’m not so sure about TV’s latest odd couple - chef Nigel Slater and Countryfile’s resident farmer Adam Henson (Nigel and Adam’s Farm Kitchen, 8pm, BBC1, 20 November).
They had a decent enough rapport (bordering on flirtatious at times - or was that just me?) - but the infotainment-lite approach to “exploring how food gets from farm to fork, and how to make the most of seasonal produce” was less impressive.
The show did have its fair share of highlights, mainly when Slater was taken out of his comfort zone - his ‘epic fail’ attempt to water pigs and erratic antics behind the wheel of a combine harvester being noteworthy examples. The lasagne taste-test was also enlightening - you could almost hear the sigh of relief from Holborn as Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range got the seal of approval. And the food porn was also up to Slater’s usual high standards - that ‘cow crumble’ with protruding marrow made me want to lick the screen.
Mouthwatering recipes aside, however, the educational element simply wasn’t up to scratch. Bombshell revelations included the fact that it’s difficult to grow pasta wheat in the UK due to our unpredictable climate, and that if you cook food in bulk it brings down the cost of individual portions - I could have sworn at one point I saw a bear wandering off into the woods in the background with a toilet roll and newspaper tucked under its arm.
Although Countryfile and Nigel Slater’s cookery shows work in their own right, melding them together just felt a little too odd for me.
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