In a week characterised by discombobulating twin engines of unrelenting personal boredom and an intensely fast and distressing news cycle, where does “slow TV” fit?
The genre is a catch-all for marathon programming, first popularised in Norway and including broadcasts of a 10-hour train trip, a five-day cruise, and a 12-hour log-fire. Is it the balm we all need in this pandemic? Or is it just another layer of boredom in the already towering lasagne of boredom in our iso lives?
For me, the latest venture – a three hour journey about the making of easter eggs, broadcast this evening on SBS – is the latter.
Unable to leave the house except to go to the supermarket, and prevented from socialising with anyone except for those I live with, I’m craving a bit of drama. But mostly I want to watch television that features people – interacting with each other, having experiences, telling stories, being out there in the world. I miss faces. But The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury Australia is just that: the story of a factory.
People are glimpsed here and there. There is a truck driver transporting the Cadbury “crumb” from the docks of Port Melbourne to the factory in Ringwood; there’s a glimpse of the face of a forklift driver; there’s the back of the head of a factory worker, hair in a net. But much of the work of making chocolate is automated. This is really the story of animals, trucks, pallets and machines.
I struggled to get through in one sitting. Mostly I struggled to stay awake, falling asleep at multiple points due to the sheer monotony. It’s definitely the most boring television show I have ever watched.
But for those whose nervous systems are jacked up on frightening pandemic news, or who are unable to sleep, the dullness of this production could be just the thing needed to self-soothe – or at least lull them into a soporific state.
Made by Mint TV – the company that brought viewers The Ghan, a 17-hour broadcast of a train crossing Australia – Chocolate Factory takes us through the seven main stages required to get chocolate out there: the sugarcane harvest, the sugar mill, the dairy farm, the milk plant, the crumb factory, the chocolate factory and the shops.
It is essentially a story of alchemy: how 6,014 tonnes of cocoa, 87 million litres of milk and 54 million kilos of sugar turn into 477 million eggs and 14.6 million bunnies for Easter 2020.
The documentary starts in Mackay during sugar harvest, where cane is turned into sugar after being fed into rollers. The juice is squeezed out then crystallised. This 20th century mill with its creaking, old-fashioned machinery is in stark contrast to the shiny, antiseptic Melbourne chocolate factory where the “action” later takes place.
But the most fascinating aspect of both factories’ processes is the close-ups of the ingredients as they turn into chocolate.
Watching the raw milk moving down a pipe at the one-hour mark is mesmerising, as is the bit where a mix of what looks like chocolate and cream is poured in a spiral shape into a machine. The thick liquid falls, drapes and makes these extremely hypnotic patterns. As I struggled to keep my eyes open – lulled by the sounds of the machine, plip, plip, gurgle, plop, plip, plip, gurgle, plop – the production process seemed more beautiful than the finished product.
Waking up and watching the next stretch of factory footage was rewarding. Around 100 minutes in, there was a flowing river of chocolate mud reminiscent of Wonka’s factory (sadly minus Augustus Gloop being stuck in the tube) – and I found myself rewinding the gorgeous bit where the machine dribbles the chocolate from a great height. Yum.
These extreme close ups of creamy deliciousness dripping picturesquely battle with the uglier parts of the production process – such as the bit at about the two-hour mark where the semi-processed chocolate gets put through a refiner, goes down a conveyor belt and looks very similar to lumpy untreated sewage.
Or in Mackay where we’re shown a dirty, sludgy waterfall of sugar cane by-products, the discarded fibre of which is called, quite appropriately, bagasse. (It’s burnt in boilers, which turns it into steam, which provides electricity to power the mill.)
Your enjoyment of The Chocolate Factory will depend on your state of mind. But if you are having trouble sleeping, it is an extremely effective and safe sedative.
• The Chocolate Factory airs on Saturday 11 April from 7.35pm, on SBS
