One day, your grandchildren will pull themselves out from beneath the bunker they dug out of the ground with their bare hands. They will gaze about at the dirt-red skies, choking on the fog of radioactive fallout. And they will ask if you can remember the moment when humanity collapsed. And you’ll say yes, and tell them it was when a streaming platform called Quibi announced a food show where blindfolded chefs were shot in the face with a food cannon.
The show is called Dishmantled, and I have only explained half of it. In Dishmantled, Tituss Burgess from Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt will gather together a number of previously respected chefs, and rob them of the power of sight. At this point, he will load an unknown food into a high-powered food cannon and blast it at them. The chefs must then analyse each obliterated molecule of food as it screams into their mouth at incredible speed, then forlornly attempt to replicate whatever they thought this agonising culinary blur actually was.
That’s it. That’s Dishmantled, the last cookery show humanity will ever produce. Because it has to be. Where can it go from here?
Once, many years ago, cookery shows existed to be educational. People wouldn’t know how to cook, so they would watch a cookery show, and then replicate the recipes in the comfort of their own homes. It wasn’t a perfect system – largely because in those days the person doing the on-screen cooking was Fanny Cradock, an amphetamine-addled occult enthusiast determined to feed us slabs of offal suffocated in cream and butter until our hearts gave out – but at least the intention was there.
In time, the educational nature of the food show gave way to entertainment. Ready Steady Cook asked chefs to throw together a meal with a random selection of ingredients. MasterChef did the same, only with a honking egg for a host. The Great British Bake Off took the humble art of baking and fed it through a broken kaleidoscope that meant a scone wasn’t a scone unless it was also a feat of structural engineering. Man V Food was a Cronenberg body-horror film; a lurching pile-on of grotesque consumption that provoked intense feelings of nausea in its viewers whenever they thought of eating.
And now, with Dishmantled, we have reached the end of the road. You will not learn anything from watching Dishmantled. It will not provide you with inspiration for your next dinner party. There will be no recipe downloads or accompanying cookbook. At best – at absolute best, if the stars align and everything goes right – Dishmantled may provide a tiny boost in the sales of recreational high-powered food cannons. That’s the highest thing it can possibly aspire to.
The closest thing to education Dishmantled will provide is if a chef removes their blindfold, scrapes a wad of liquidised pork from the roof of their mouth, holds it to camera and explains how the texture would have been different if it had been a wad of liquidised beef. The closest thing to infamy Dishmantled will achieve is if some copycat idiot accidentally decapitates their best friend by catapulting a whole roast chicken at his skull. The biggest ambition Dishmantled has is to become the stupidest programme people watch on their phones while sitting on the toilet. Dishmantled has absolutely nothing going for it, and I will watch every single episode 15 times.
