Fortnight foul up

A few particularly nasty hangovers and long working hours conspired last week to knock my writing out of sync, so this will be my first TV round-up in a fortnight. I feel bad for letting it slip and i would like to take this opportunity to apologise to both of the people who read this blog.

While incapacitiated i did manage to fix at least one bloodshot eye on the dream screen at various points over the two weeks however, and with my mind never far away from the mealstrom of faux indignition and excessive italics that is TV Casualty, I made some quick-deposits in the memory banks and wrote a few post-dated critical cheques.

Nigella Express hit the screen last week as the food seductress clambered in and out of taxi's, entertained friends and did some important looking work, all while planning what to have for supper that evening (a generic term which seemed to mean anything from a full blown meal with family to pudding in bed, the nuances of which presumably only the seriously well heeled can discern.)

Week One's menu included crispy calimari and some sort of pudding, all made with mountains of butter, sugar, fat, and the decadent abandon Nigella has traded on throughout her career. In this series we have been invited into her swank London pad, (metaphorically of course) to see how lazily and easily we too can whip up spectacular food while labouring under the demands of Modern Life.

While i admire Nigella's "I'm not prepared to sacrifice one meal" philosophy and her aversion to the Cook yourself thin mob, I thought the show didn't really measure up in the cooking, where it mattered the most. The food looked inviting, but in the process Nigella doesn't really impart any transferable knowledge, rather demonstrating a sort of Cook by Numbers approach and focusing more on the inordinate pleasure she seems to take from sampling her own creations. This programme made me hungry, but it didn't particularly make me want to cook.

Another new arrival to TV land last week was the return of Kath & Kim, the Aussie fem-fest chick-com so beloved of my own dear Duchess. Focusing on the bogan-ey antics of the mother and daughter of the title, the fifth (?) series features a new addition to the cast as baby Eppony-Ray enters the fray.

The first episode cranks up the comedy potential as Kim's no-good dad returns onto the scene and ends up conning his guileless daughter out of several thousand dollars, causing her and put upon husband Brett to move into the Day-Knight love nest, making for overcrowding and ensuing hilarity.

Opinions on this show are divided (usually along gender lines) but i generally find Kath & Kim to be watchable, if a bit hit and miss. The posh shop assistants at Fountaingate are about as funny as cancer, and you get the sense that some of the jokes are a bit too laboured when a more subtle approach would have done the job better. Despite this, Kath & Kim boasts some good characters, and the Australian Suburban Limbo in which it is set provides a good backdrop with plenty of comic mileage.

Considering i live with an obsessive, Kath & Kim is going to be an unavoidable part of my life for some time, and thats not a bad thing at all.