Would You Eat An Elephant? No, neither would they

'Would You Eat An Elephant? is the sort of show where you spend more time inspecting the coving than eyeballing the screen. It's gutsy viewing, cruel and bloodthirsty and, for the most part, without a point. It's 90 minutes of two chefs who prepare nose-to-tail cuisine (they serve up every part of the animal) travelling the world and eating a lot of barely-dead stuff, that'll have you vomiting through your eyes.

Needle-thin in premise it may be, but the voiceover continuously flogs it as if you're observing some humanitarian relief effort: "With increasing concerns about the downsize in industrial food production, shouldn't we all be looking for greater variety in the animals we put on plates?"

And with this, their justification to turn your stomach over like a virgin in a whorehouse is complete. Fergus Henderson and Jeremy Lee are entirely comfortable with scoffing cobras in Hanoi and horse in Italy, the voiceover simply relishing their lunch of songbird casserole: "It sings as sweetly on the plate as in the tree." No it fucking well doesn't. It's plucked and in a pot, mate.

Henderson and Lee seem immune to the horror of it all, the two of them chain-smoking their way across the continents, laughing at their own jokes and how they've managed to get away with it. But this shallow excuse to shock the audience takes a twist in Vietnam and suddenly the show finds a heart. Unable to eat sewer rat, the pair reluctantly try a mouthful of dog stomach. When they're shown the 'farm' where the dogs are bred, what follows is two minutes of brutal, unbearable television. For the first time you empathise with the chefs and their situation, as they're forced to turn their backs on the animals as they're beaten, slaughtered and burnt.

Hypocrisy abounds - the chefs will gladly serve a boiled pig's head but can't understand why somebody would ever consider eating a monkey. That said, while different cultures may perceive animals to fulfill very different roles in their society, there's one commonality that binds all of us together: whether it's the Kalahari desert or the slums of Hanoi, you'll always find some ropey looking fuckers wearing tracksuits.

And they didn't even eat the elephant, either. Unbelievable.

2 disappointingly uneaten trunks out of 5

by Eric Murphy