Well it's Thursday again and tonight at 8pm we're bidding farewell to the Hairy Bikers on BBC 2 and to be honest I think that out of all the cookery shows we're subjected to, Hairy Bikers is the best of the bunch.
This six week asian adventure has felt more like the BBC travelogues of old that I mentioned a few days ago and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Every week the pair visit a new location to sample and re create the local cuisine as well as jumping headlong into the local culture. Tonight the pair conclude their adventures in South Korea, trying out the fried chicken as well as turning their hands to archery and Gangnam style dancing, the latter named so forth after the residential area of Gangnam.
As I said, tonight is the last in the series and if you enjoy good quality TV you should definitely check out the other five episodes online because there's not a bad one among them.
Shows like this really undermine gimmicks like Holiday Hit Squad, showing them to be the wastes of screen time that they are. People enjoy holiday shows, not for weird injuries or seeing budget hotels fall down, but for seeing people getting stuck into local life and showing what can be found there. Similarly, people watch cooking shows to see people enjoying the food. Not to see people eliminated week after week after under cooking a hot pot.
It doesn't matter that the Hairy Bikers don't make groundbreaking television, they don't need to. Like all good craftsmen, they do a couple of things really well instead of trying to appeal to as many audiences as possible. In an age where people can easily browse online for holidays and recipes, many other cookery and holiday shows should take heed. The internet already does quantity over quality, television needs to follow a different path.
