Something old, something new: "Heston's Feast"
It’s been about three years since I’ve lived with a television, although I must admit: living without television today is much less of a sacrifice than it was 10 years ago. These days, I can catch lots of shows online, and DVDs now contain entire seasons of television programs, for long, uninterrupted, commercial-free viewing. None of these options were available back in 1999. Even something like YouTube, which has quickly developed into a mainstream entity today, was completely non-existent.
But even though I can now do reasonably well without cable, I’m woefully out of loop regarding shows like Top Chef, and I must admit that it’s become a little bothersome. Frankly, I don’t know anything about this upcoming season of Top Chef, nor do I know anything about the last season (or the two seasons before that one). I am aware of Top Chef Masters — and duly intrigued — although I haven’t seen one episode of that program, either. To be honest, as a food blogger, I feel a little remiss by not keeping on board the Top Chef bandwagon, but Bravo doesn’t stream full episodes, and I’m not ready to give my life back to cable.
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Considering today’s trends, I should probably write television reviews in lieu of book reviews. Then again, I’m sure lots of people are already blogging about shows like Top Chef, so what’s the point? For now, I’ll just have to let the Top Chef mania pass me by (after all, as I have mentioned before, I cannot be all things to all people with this particular site). However, for what it’s worth, I am recently up-to-date on “Heston’s Feast” — produced by Channel 4 in the U.K. — a five-episode series which may or may not debut here in the United States. I ripped the series from some DVDs that a friend had brought over from England (she had worked at The Fat Duck during the show’s taping — it had aired in the UK earlier this year).
From my own perspective, “Heston’s Feast” was quite an interesting introduction to the Heston Blumenthal persona. As Americans, we don’t ever see that much of Blumenthal, since he really hasn’t received that much television exposure over here (at least, not to my knowledge). In contrast, it seems as though Gordon Ramsay has practically become one of our own, thanks to shows such as “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Kitchen Nightmares” (as an aside, I always felt that the BBC version of “Kitchen Nightmares” was superior to the Fox production, while my friend from England felt the opposite: she liked how the Americans were more likely to stand up to chef Ramsay, which generated more drama, even if they looked foolish in doing so).
In terms of sheer personality, Ramsay is far more dynamic than Blumenthal, and in my eyes, is much better-suited for reality television. However, in noting this key difference, I must add that “Heston’s Feast” is actually pretty far removed from reality, trading real-life drama for something a bit more bookish, cerebral and fantastic (descriptions that Blumenthal himself seems to personify). Each episode of “Heston’s Feast” focuses on a different historic era, and the series presents a modern, molecular twist on some old, long-forgotten traditions. At its core, the program is highly entertaining food television, maybe slightly less blogworthy than Top Chef, but far less ephemeral as well.
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I have read that Channel 4 has ordered more episodes of the series for next year, so for British viewers, “Heston’s Feast” will return to the airwaves. As for us, we’ll have to wait and see if the show is ever destined for an American audience. At any rate, it’s not like you actually need television to access these shows in the meantime. It is 2009, after all.
