It may be chance or fashion, but the truth is that two different television platforms have a couple of series that have the common denominator of food, although with very different approaches.
On one hand it is Boiling Point On Movistar Plus+, an excellent and exhaustive X-ray of the kitchen of a top-notch restaurant in London today. Ten or twelve employees locked in a small space who will have to share for several hours a day under the pressure of making dishes with sufficient quality and speed to justify their price. Whoever does it, gets paid.
Of course, not everything happens in the kitchen, which is an added bonus to the plot. Individual stories, small or large conflicts under the inevitable authority of a chef who commands and orders firmly and creatively. And here it is worth highlighting a quality of well-made series: information, something that in Boiling Point is more than confirmed. Philip Barantini, co-creator and director of two of the four episodes of the series, worked for 12 years in professional kitchens. He knows what he’s talking about. With a solid cast of acting professionals, Vinette Robinson stands out among them, the chef with a complicated past and a no less complicated present in that micro-world of the kitchen.
The other series, the Norwegian one Salmon Island and Discord, on Netflix, tells us about the main industry on the island of Frøya, in the Trøndelag region: salmon. And when talking about industry, it is inevitable to talk about entrepreneurs, which in the case of the series is Ingrid Skjerven, the owner of the largest salmon company on the island and obsessed with swallowing up her local rival, a family company. At this point it is fair to point out the advantages of “copy and paste” offered by computers and which saves complex references such as those of the creators of the series Anne Bjørnstad and Eilif Skodvin.
Once again, quality and information, because after watching the episodes of the series we know much more about voracious capitalism and salmon farms, a voracity that is embodied by the implacable Julie Lange compared to a more traditional Knut Holstad, also a capitalist but more understanding of what we call the human race. Rebellious children, forbidden loves and a lot of salmon on a small Norwegian island.
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