I generally don’t watch a lot of food television. After thinking about food and eating all day at work, the last thing I want to do is hear more from chefs as they prattle on about their amazing creative abilities and personal struggles on an episode of Chopped.
It doesn’t help that the format has been warped and abused over the past decade, with cooking shows growing ever more absurd in their attempts to attract viewers. From Guy’s Grocery Games to Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Kitchen, I have no real tolerance for fucking around with the already-dramatic process of cooking by, say, making chefs switch kitchens in the middle of preparing the entree. Which is probably why I have an unrelenting love for the quiet simplicity of Two Fat Ladies, the best cooking show in television history.
Premiered in the United Kingdom in 1996, the BBC show