I in most cases don’t watch a large number of meals tv. After fascinated by meals and consuming all day at paintings, the very last thing I wish to do is pay attention extra from cooks as they prattle on about their superb ingenious talents and private struggles on an episode of Chopped.
It doesn’t assist that the structure has been warped and abused during the last decade, with cooking displays rising ever extra absurd of their makes an attempt to draw audience. From Man’s Grocery Video games to Gordon Ramsay’s Subsequent Degree Kitchen, I don’t have any actual tolerance for fucking round with the already-dramatic strategy of cooking by way of, say, making cooks transfer kitchens in the midst of making ready the entree. Which is most certainly why I’ve an unrelenting love for the quiet simplicity of Two Fats Girls, the most efficient cooking display in tv historical past.
Premiered in the UK in 1996, the BBC display follows Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright as they climb aboard their Triumph Thunderbird motorbike — pushed by way of Paterson with Dickson Wright driving shotgun in a sidecar — and pass on adventures, like scallop fishing on a ship in Cornwall, all leading to a slew of dishes that vary from drool-inducing to completely confounding.
Two Fats Girls — syndicated at the Meals Community within the U.S. — is natural convenience tv, absolute best for binge-watching on a lazy weekend. It’s no longer precisely a display for the ones taking a look to increase their very own cooking repertoire: You’re extra observing the hosts prepare dinner than finding out the right way to get ready the recipes, and it doesn’t be offering the similar form of step by step instruction you’d see on Each Day With Rachael Ray or The united states’s Take a look at Kitchen movies. Moderately, the collection is like sitting on the counter of your captivating British aunties, observing them get ready a hearty meal.
Greater than that, even though, it’s probably the most few sure representations of fats ladies in meals media. From the start of the collection, Paterson and Dickson Wright exude an implausible, unique pleasure with out the glitz or high-priced manufacturing concerned within the trendy cooking display. It’s a bit of bit tacky, a complete lot captivating, and possibly the one cooking display in historical past that doesn’t shy clear of the truth that its hosts are, actually, fats.
“Seize that crab, Clarissa! Consume that beet Jennifer!,” the jaunty intro music is going. “Smartly doesn’t that pheasant glance delightful? Fasten your tastebuds for a gastronomic experience, ‘motive us two fats women are itching to get into your kitchen!” On the finish of the theme music, cool animated film variations of Paterson and Dickson Wright on their motorbike wreck right into a wall just like the Kool-Assist Guy.
Those two fats women get ready and consume meals with pleasure, and with out apology. There’s no guilt or disgrace, which is exceedingly uncommon even if skinny individuals are consuming on display screen. On this planet of the Two Fats Girls, any scrumptious, lovingly ready chew is “definitely worth the energy,” as Nice British Bake-Off pass judgement on Prue Leith would possibly say. Simplest right here, it if truth be told is going with out the reminder of the pernicious have an effect on of nutrition tradition on our delight in wealthy, scrumptious meals.
This angle, in fact, earned the display some scorn within the ‘90s, on the top of the low-fat craze, with its critics complaining that Peterson and Dickson Wright had been “encouraging” weight problems. The backlash used to be so important that Dickson Wright later stated that the 2 confronted dying threats, however the duo remained themselves all through Two Fats Girls’ 4 seasons. When the “frame positivity” motion used to be nonetheless incubating, those ladies had been already residing it.
The display additionally dispelled one of the crucial concepts that individuals have about fatness, and fats folks generally — that we’re lazy or lonely or incapable of playing even fundamental bodily process. As an alternative, Dickson Wright and Paterson are living existence to the fullest, their fatness by no means preventing them from leaping on a crabbing boat with a fisherman who sings sea shanties, or driving their motorbike into the geographical region to prepare dinner wild sport. It’s a refreshing damage from the relentless pageant and manufactured drama that dominates trendy cooking displays, and possibly extra importantly, the obsession with food plan and “well being” that’s inflamed even Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten, whose complete logo is constructed round indulgent, lavishly ready meals.
Sadly, the display used to be tragically minimize quick after the fourth episode of its fourth season in 1999, when Paterson died months after being identified with lung most cancers on the age of 71. Nevertheless it lives on without end on YouTube, the place nearly all of its 18 episodes are to be had to circulation without cost, providing a completely new target market to revel in the unmitigated pleasure — and birthday party of fatness — that Two Fats Girls delivered to the display screen.
It’s a disgrace that trendy meals tv, with its intense storylines and shiny manufacturing, doesn’t glance extra just like the homey, herbal convenience of Two Fats Girls. Most likely, then, it’s time for a reboot. Our monitors may just use extra of that easy, laid-back vibe, and it might be so refreshing to look two individuals who couldn’t care much less about what number of energy are in an entree or whether or not or no longer their our bodies are “have compatibility for tv,” as they invent and benefit from the wonders of meals.
