The second series of Superfoods: The Real Story (Channel 4) follows the same format as the first, which aired almost exactly a year ago. Presenter Kate Quilton, who back then professed to eat kale “most mornings”, investigates the facts behind bold health claims made about certain foodstuffs. Unless you’re a particularly faddish and fastidious eater, you might be surprised these claims even need debunking, because you will never have heard anyone make them before.
The new series suffers from the same jarring mismatch of tone and content as the old one: Quilton fizzes with optimism and general positivity throughout, even though the actual truth about superfoods is virtually always underwhelming. “The jury’s out” is about the highest accolade on offer. Red wine may indeed contain a compound called resveratrol, which may in turn have a protective effect on brain function. But to ingest enough to get the benefit you’d have to drink 13 bottles of wine a day.
“You can’t do that!” said Quilton, whose presenting style often relies on giving enthusiastic voice to the bleeding obvious. The programme never offered up a working definition of the term “superfood”, but I’m guessing “the sufficient dosage is generally fatal” would not be part of it. Sorry, red wine.
It’s also a bit of a travelogue, with Quilton jetting off to Italy to find out if tomatoes are a superfood (not exactly) and to Japan to try some natto, a sticky fermented soya bean product that may or may not taste terrible. Quilton was dining with a natto-loving Japanese family, and was clearly being polite and, as ever, upbeat. Her face told a different story.
Natto may be a superfood, or possibly not. In western Japan, where no one eats it, they have a much higher incidence of hip fractures than in eastern Japan, where people swear by natto. I’m assuming the people of western Japan have weighed both sides, and on the whole prefer having hip fractures.
There are a few admirable things about this programme. Even if it never expressly rubbishes the whole notion of superfoods, its findings more or less add up to the same thing. And if the dietary advice on offer is simplistic, it’s still indisputable: it couldn’t hurt for you to eat more tomatoes, and you should never drink 13 bottles of red wine in the same day. The mild protective effect to your hippocampus will be outweighed by your death.
I was once a hardcore devotee of Prisoner: Cell Block H. I watched the repeats solidly for years. Nowadays I don’t recall much about the Australian women’s prison soap, apart from the theme song and people saying “Lizzie’s feeling a bit crook”. Lizzie was often a bit crook.
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Wentworth Prison (Channel 5), a Cell Block H update, which has managed three series without crossing my radar, last night returned for a fourth. The prison burned down at the end of the last one, and the inmates are now being returned to the newly rebuilt Wentworth Correctional Facility.
It soon became apparent that this isn’t so much an update as a gritty, big-budget reboot. All the main characters I dimly remember are still there: Bea, the prison top dog; Vera, the prison officer (now governor), known as “vinegar tits”; Lizzie – so far, not at all crook. Sadistic Joan “The Freak” Ferguson turned up early, not as a guard but as a prisoner, housed in a Lecter-style isolation cell.
It’s as cliche-ridden as its forebear, but Wentworth Prison is more violent, much swearier and way lesbianer. This genre is more crowded than ever, with Orange is the New Black and the Spanish prison drama Locked Up, but, if you like that sort of thing, Wentworth is definitely worth a look. There’s no real need to delve back three series, though; just jump right in, as I did. Actually, it’s as if I’d never been away.
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Wimbledon 2016 coverage (BBC2) began with a recitation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18, the one that begins “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” Sue Barker said the words were more than fitting to set up this year’s 130th championship here at Wimbledon. But I’m not sure that’s true. I don’t think Shakespeare was making an appeal for better weather.
It also seemed an odd choice to show footage of the top seeded players having their bags searched by security on the way in, as if this were just another venerable tradition. But by the time John McEnroe and Tim Henman started bickering about the difference between a white dress code and a “predominantly white” one, I felt on safe ground. It’s not about what changes are made to Wimbledon or its coverage from year to year. It’s about what never changes.
