While there are moments of genuine humour, the sneering tone of this fly-on-the-wall documentary doesn’t sit well – particularly when the hospitality industry is suffering
Many big questions are being asked about how the coronavirus pandemic will reshape our lives, society and culture. Will it make the NHS respected, untouchable and better funded? Will it force a reckoning between the haves and the have-nots? Will the resurgence of nature, caused by the retreat of humans, prompt us to re-evaluate our responses to the climate breakdown?
But such questions are for the serious pages of the newspaper. Here, we can only ask: post-corona, whither television? Obviously, the practical ramifications are already being felt. Filming has been shut down or postponed everywhere, holes in the schedules are getting larger and deeper and those in the business of acting, directing or producing are trying to find ways to build dramas and documentaries via Zoom. But perhaps it is more interesting to think about intangibles – how tastes might change under this kind of pressure, what appetites might disappear, what new ones might be born in the aftermath.
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