With the end of January came the concluding episode of Dawn French’s four-part drama ‘Delicious’. But was it as a delicious as it promised to be? The opening of the first episode drew us in with mouth-watering scenes of the Cornish countryside; alongside a tempting mixture of lies, adultery, sex and very posh looking food. But did the series play out as strongly as it began?
The premise was very good. French and Fox are a perfect, polar-opposite duo. Both fighting for the same man, Leo, but different in every single way. But once he dies at the end of the first episode, the dynamic changes completely and leaves the audience wondering if the show is about to morph into a Sister-Act.
The two women are brought back together through Leo’s death and the sorting of his affairs. When it transpires that he has left his beloved Penrose Hotel to his ex-wife and current mistress, thing become heated between the two women. It is difficult to choose sides, do we pity Sam (played by Fox) who has been deprived of the biggest and best part of her late-husband’s estate and become a side-lined mockery? Or do we acknowledge that Gina (played by French) was the one who helped Leo build it up in the first place, and was simply inflicting her revenge on the woman who cheated with her husband first?
Throughout all of this, the women continuously blame each other, showing no resentment for the dearly deceased Leo who proves not only to be a serial adulterer, but also the mastermind of a very illegal tax-avoidance scheme. He, the heart of all the chaos that ensues and unfolds, remains blameless, and is spoken about by his two wives with fond reminiscence rather than bitter hatred. This didn’t sit quite right with a lot of viewers.
On the side of this, we have the story of Leo’s two step children engaging in an incestuous affair. This was certainly gripping and kept us on the edge of our seats, despite the poor acting from these supporting characters. But it seems that the writers took the easy way out of this and at the final hour, the show unveiled that Leo was not the girls’ father meaning, their affair was not as gross and illegal as first made out to be.
It just seems that the series never totally came together. In theory I understand it; two women and their mismatched family are brought closer (in some cases in an incestuous manner) and ultimately thrive after the death of Leo which ends up being ‘the best thing that could have happened’ as he keeps insisting as the voice-over narrator (even though he’s dead, it gets a bit confusing but keep up). But it never really comes together. The dark comedy is in some cases awkward, half-baked and leaves a funny taste in your mouth. Nevertheless, you cannot quite stop eating, not until the very last bite, to find out if the totally predicable plot pans out as you expected; with ‘avenge’ indeed being the not very cryptic acronym for Geneva and where the hidden money pulls them out of debt and back into prosperity. This is not Sky 1’s best short drama series, although it gave it a good go.
Edited by Susan Akyeampong
Source:
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