I’m not sure about the decision to spin a series out of Boiling Point, the 2021 one-take film about a famous chef starring Stephen Graham. It may be that you can have too much of a good thing, or it may be that I’m suffering from some kind of nervous condition. But either way, the first two episodes stressed me out to a quite incredible degree. Thirty minutes in, and I was positively twitching. In the days since, I’ve been nervous around knives, whisks, frying pans and boiled beetroot. Say the words “hollandaise sauce” and my heart starts to beat frantically, like a wooden spoon against the sides of a copper bowl. To watch any more, I’m going to need a support animal, and a magnum of something very expensive.
Boiling Point – the movie, not this series – is an ur-text: the Kitchen Originator. Pre-dating both The Bear, Disney’s hit series about a hip, young chef, and The Menu, a film in which Ralph Fiennes also slips unsettlingly into some whites, Graham played Andy, a chef on the edge. The action takes place over a single night, at the end of which something bad happened to this genius-tyrant. Was he dead or alive?
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