Willie’s Chocolate Revolution
Channel 4
CSI
Channel 5
PLEASE, someone save us from evangelical foodies. We are full to bursting point on Jamie Oliver’s pontification about the recipes he thinks will save Britain from national dietary catastrophe and working-class kitchen suicide. We despair of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s rural manure-whiff natural cooking and we recoil from Gordon Ramsay’s self-fulfilling pan-banging, Anglo-Saxon-fuelled scullery skills. In addition, television force feeds us so-called great British cooking, regional judgemental culinary programmes, endless satellite repeats of market kitchens, cooks ready, steady and raring to go and Rick Stein on a barge somewhere in France.
It is all too much for many viewers, but here comes another programme to stuff us with more recipes – this time given a kick with some element of cacao (that’s chocolate to you and me). Willie Harcourt-Cooze is another hyper-energetic foodie and, because his name is Willie and he is obsessed about chocolate, we get an instant connection to the world of the chocolate factory and all that warm, chummy feeling of comfort. And what a nauseating place it turns out to be.
Willie’s Chocolate Revolution is self-promotion at its most blatant. Cooze is trying to establish a business by flaunting this real chocolate thing. We are party to his sweaty visits to involve himself and support Venezuelan farmers. We are reminded that he has money pressures. He attempts to fuse his chosen passion and the normality of his family life, contrived a bit for the cameras, in his quest to sell real chocolate as a healthy option. He strives to convince us that it is so much better for us than the dreadful milk chocolate we have grown to love over generations.
In one breath, he sounds off about his wonderful basic chocolate ingredient; in the next, he is seen chucking loads of cream, sugar and eggs into a mix. Then we are subjected to some research in a physiology laboratory to show that his chocolate drink has some healthy ingredients and – guess what, – he is delighted about that choctastic result. A breathy voiceover describes his traumatic career choice, but all we are left with is another irritating food preacher who seems to be telling us what to eat, in tandem with building a celebrity career for himself. While I watched, I had a cup of tea and a Kit-Kat.
Perhaps I need some therapy, because I find an hour-long programme about a chocolate champion more of a queasy experience than a bloody good crime drama. Addicted as I am to the slick gore-fest that is the world of CSI in its various manifestations, I was one of millions left traumatised by the news that William Petersen, who plays Gil Grissom, was leaving the parent, Las Vegas-set show. I cannot think of another high-profile programme that has survived following the departure of its primary star. But, unbelievably, after a couple of Grissom-free episodes, CSI has held onto its gripping format, proving that the show is bigger than its constituent parts. Laurence Fishburne is now the leading man and the show has gained new energy and freshness from his naive character, along with his authoritative but beautifully understated and non-status conscious performance. He is helped by the presence of the stalwart cast, of course.
The plot, as with most CSI plots, is neither here nor there in that all episodes begin with an elaborate, obscure murder and then we coast along with the experts as clue after clue eventually leads us to a conclusion. We enjoy the ride rather than the resolution. We love the feeling of being drawn into this wicked world of weirdos and whackos, reassured by the law enforcement team that holds our hands all the way through. Sometimes they lose, but most of the time they win. Thankfully, they seem to resist the temptation to talk down to us.
But in all the episodes so far, I have yet to see a chocolate factory owner submerged in a vat of cacao. We live in hope, because CSI never lets me down, with or without our beloved Grissom.
Joe Cushnan
