Omnivore

"Omnivore" is a captivating new series on Apple TV+, a visual feast that dives deep into the stories behind essential food ingredients, with educational and entertaining episodes on chilies, tuna, salt, rice, coffee, corn, bananas, and pork. The cinematography is stunning, and I was often so mesmerized by the visuals, I had to rewind to catch the dialogue we missed. Renowned chef and host René Redzepi guides viewers through each episode with his mellifluous voice making even the most commonplace ingredients seem significant. Each episode serves as a deep dive, exploring cultural relevance and the intricate connections in our lives. The series transforms the mundane into the extraordinary, reminding us of the importance of the ingredients we often take for granted.

Chef Rene Redzepi is many things in the world of gastronomy--a master craftsman, creative genius, famously disciplined, a generational talent and visionary. David Attenborough he is not.

Whoever decided to give Redzepi narration responsibilities for this series should forever be second guessed on any and all creative matters. Any moments of visual brilliance or stirring storyline are instantly deflated by the insipid voice that overlays them. Redzepi is at his best, and his dry Nordic charisma most appreciated, when speaking off the cuff. In Omnivore it's clear that while he may have contributed in some way to the writing, they are not his words, and the AI-like delivery only emphasizes this.

In truth, the whole production fails to live up the subject matter. What's more, the first episode revolving around chilies was possibly the most uninspiring of the lot with the direction and cinematography failing to deliver what an amateur could provide with a cellphone on a gimbal. There's no doubt that the crew was high-fiving and chest bumping after wrapping a shot of the Thai chef resting on, and being showered by, bird dropping chilies like he was Mena Suvari. I wasn't expecting to get second-hand embarrassment from my viewing, but this scene nonetheless provided it.

Anthony Bourdain famously said he would rather fail miserably than to make competent television. If only the creators of Omnivore had taken the same advice.

I found this series to be educational, with stunning imagery and told by someone with a true love of food, its roots, and respecting quality over quantity. These naysayers can get lost. It's interesting, and makes me fall in love with food again and the love of how its binds us by brining us together all over again. I highly suggest watching this series if only to learn that we need to respect where our food comes from, who is involved with getting it to us, and how important is is to connect with its producers in some way.

Every episode was educational and relatable. Every subject important to myself as they're all things I consume, most of them daily.

Don't get me wrong, AppleTV+ has some excellent content like Severance, For All Mankind and Presumed Innocent. But even with their top tier stuff, there's this whiff of something noxious that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

This docu-series perfectly encapsulates it: that odor is the smug condescension of the global one percent. Hosted by some celebrity chef from a fancy restaurant few people could ever afford to dine at, it trots through some popular foods, focused on just a tiny fragment of the whole industry, the fancy pants artisanal froo-froo segment.

It's lovely that some dude in Rwanda is making coffee by hand, for what, $100 a pound? Obviously this has no relevance to the common herd, watching grocery prices soar and thinking about what they have to cut back.

The episode about salt could have been fascinating, especially if it did anything more than, once again, talk about the teeny industry of making salt by hand. How about the long, fascinating history of salt in various human cultures? We barely get any of that.

Netflix (which in general doesn't have anything near the quality of AppleTV+ anymore) made a good series along the same lines called Rotten. If you're frustrated by Omnivore, check that out. Eschewing the prissy approach, Netflix takes us to the gang wars of the avocado trade, the cratering French wine industry, and corruption in the garlic industry. Much more real and relevant.

1. This is boring, for each topic they explain five minutes and then they show like 20 minutes of repetitive shots 2. History is plain and reductionist It was expected we would know the history of each food, but this just show a commercial look of the item Imagine that for chili they talked about paprika and Tabasco, there is a lot more.

Mexico was not mentioned, even this is the country which consume more chilly and the crazy relationship of Aztecs with it. Not to mention the great variety of chilies they have.

3. Beautiful shots I can say that photograph was so nice, but it is useless without a genuine story to tell.