The Naked Chef

Watching the younger Jamie is very annoying, very full of himself and the lisp, any minute I think he's either going to swallow his tongue or bite it off. Moving on. I have come across the re-runs of this program (why I dont know). But the Most Infuriating of all is the Camera technique. Can you please stand still and take the shot. If Jamie is describing the food and what he is doing please take a shot of that at the same time, not a part of his face and definitely NOT close ups of parts of his face or part of a bowl etc. But PLEASE< PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT use the Wobbly or Drunken Camera Man Technique. IT DOES NOT WORK. AT ALL!!!!! For the record I enjoy watching Jamie's more recent food programs and the camera technique thank God has gone back to actual shots of the food and definitely Not the Drunken Camera technique.

Much has been made of Jamie Oliver, and his little cooking show, on the BBC in Britain, and the Food Network in the US. It's real. It takes place in a real kitchen in a real London apartment. It's real time, instead of the usual "here's one I made earlier" staged production. And yes, with hand-held cameras, there is a certain amount of jerking around. But this should not be new to American audiences; Woody Allen has been doing this for years, and nobody finds him irritating. (Okay, many people find him irritating, but not me.)

The bottom line is that this show is different from other American TV cooking shows, and in fairness, it is quite a shift from most BBC cooking shows. It's supposed to be. Once you get used to it differences, and focus on the food, you will surely enjoy this one as much as I do. The recipes are flexibile, simple to follow, and really work. And in a montage at the end of every show, wherein Jamie's friends, relatives, and other hangers on enjoy Jamie's creations, he demonstrates that food, despite its nutritional value, is also a helluva lot of fun.

I don't know if his tongue is too fat for his mouth or what the problem is, but if you didn't have to hear him talk in his near lisp voice, this show might be tolerable. That, coupled with the fact that the American ear often has trouble understanding British accents anyway, sometimes makes this show irritating. Some of the dishes are good, but he does often work at such a frenzied pace that it becomes an overload to try and keep up with what's going on. Can be somewhat entertaining at times. For awhile you could occasionally catch it airing on the Food Network, but the last time I saw it was at about 4:00 in the morning during an insomniac moment. I think it's been relegated to a late night time slot, right before the infomercials begin.

For some reason cookery shows have stopped being simply about good food and useful recipes and have started being used as a platform for peddling lifestyles and self-absorbed smug personalities (Think of Nigella Lawson and Tamasin Day-Lewis with their irritatingly upper-middle class attitudes to contemporary family life, where all the ingredients come from organic farms in the midlands and the 'local shop' is Harrod's food hall - 'I don't have much time in the evenings so it'll just be duck magrets in pomegranate molasses and saffron crab tartlets'). Jamie Oliver's manifesto is to make cookery hip and accessible in a sanitized way. Supposedly he's the boy every mother would want as their son, the guy the girls find cute and the lad the blokes can relate to enough to kindle an interest in the kitchen. In fact he's pretty much nothing more than an annoying pratt with a line in pseudo-cockney banter that grates rather than endeares. The recipes are fine, with his pedigree in restaraunt work I'd expect nothing less, but it's almost impossible to sit through the programmes due to the sheer embarrassment of being a member of the same species. Another negative aspect of the show is the directors prediction for oh-so-fashionable wonky camera

angles and shot's straight out of 'Sam Raimi's guide to aspiring film school students'. Instant migraine, just add aggravating background music and bits about his friends and family. WHO CARES ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?

Incidentally, he writes the books in exactly the same way that he talks. I never thought I'd read a recipe that referred to a chicken as 'a great blooming geezer of a bird'.

Jamie Oliver presents the recipes that he is using in a way that makes them easy to follow. The food is always great too. What is so good about this show is that we are not watching a professional chef make food that we as "normal" cooks, would not be able to make. Jamie actually puts a plot to his shows, which usually consists of him making food for a party or for friends. But hey, when we honestly get in the kitchen and really start cooking, those are the two main reasons we start cooking in the first place. So, if you like to watch cooking shows and you get the FOOD NETWORK, then turn this show on!