Watching The Supersizers Eat... the 80s (BBC2, Monday) was like opening a time capsule you buried last week and finding things were somehow much, much worse than you remembered. Its low-wattage stars were professional wet blanket Giles Coren and what used to be the dark-haired one from Mel and Sue - except in this achingly ironic celebration of microwave dinners and me-decade posturing, she slapped on a 'hilarious' blonde wig - because back then we all looked like Billy Idol or Madonna. Or in her case, both.
Ostensibly the show was about exploring the food of that long-forgotten period - things like Wispa bars and Pot Noodles, which we just don't see these days, except in shops everywhere. But mostly it was the gruesome twosome prancing about in pinstripe and shoulder pads while playing with prototype mobile phones the size of your head, like one of those three-hour nostalgia clip shows but without the thrilling dramatic narrative.
Their trip back through the mists of time (or the clouds of dry ice, anyway) began with a tutorial in gourmet cuisine from Marcus Wareing, the Michelin-starred chef and - perhaps in a further nod to the period - a low-rent lookalike for the chap off the original Gold Blend ads.
We learned that this was the decade when man first discovered tuna, chicken and prawns (having previously dined only on leftover mammoth) and that real Sloane gals like Princess Di kill their own salmon. A quick course in power lunching then saw the gang debate whether French onion soup is more macho than minestrone (it isn't) and if eating salmon en croute means you're a weak-minded fool (it does).
To be fair, there was some entertainment value to be had from watching Coren regurgitate curdled Bailey's after one too many Cement Mixer cocktails (a single shot being one too many for his delicate tastes) and a genuine eye-opener from Dr Duncan Diamond - apparently a real physician, not the alliterative alter ego of a comic-book superhero - about just how much stress drinking coffee puts on your heart.
Greed is good, the saying goes, but in the case of this rather listless offering, less would most definitely have been more. n
Ostensibly the show was about exploring the food of that long-forgotten period - things like Wispa bars and Pot Noodles, which we just don't see these days, except in shops everywhere. But mostly it was the gruesome twosome prancing about in pinstripe and shoulder pads while playing with prototype mobile phones the size of your head, like one of those three-hour nostalgia clip shows but without the thrilling dramatic narrative.
Their trip back through the mists of time (or the clouds of dry ice, anyway) began with a tutorial in gourmet cuisine from Marcus Wareing, the Michelin-starred chef and - perhaps in a further nod to the period - a low-rent lookalike for the chap off the original Gold Blend ads.
We learned that this was the decade when man first discovered tuna, chicken and prawns (having previously dined only on leftover mammoth) and that real Sloane gals like Princess Di kill their own salmon. A quick course in power lunching then saw the gang debate whether French onion soup is more macho than minestrone (it isn't) and if eating salmon en croute means you're a weak-minded fool (it does).
To be fair, there was some entertainment value to be had from watching Coren regurgitate curdled Bailey's after one too many Cement Mixer cocktails (a single shot being one too many for his delicate tastes) and a genuine eye-opener from Dr Duncan Diamond - apparently a real physician, not the alliterative alter ego of a comic-book superhero - about just how much stress drinking coffee puts on your heart.
Greed is good, the saying goes, but in the case of this rather listless offering, less would most definitely have been more. n
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