For some, the phrase 'all-you-can-eat' is not a sales pitch but a challenge. It's as if the proprietors are taunting them, daring the unwary to rupture an intestine through cut-price gluttony. Sometimes, however, the pledge of unlimited nosh proves misleading and the trays of mashed lobster and veg slop have already run dry.
A similar charge can be levelled at Feasts (BBC Four, Wednesdays), which seemed to promise vomitariums, Lucrezia Borgia-style mass poisonings and real-life versions of the 'snake surprise' from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Instead we got a nerd in a Parka waxing not very lyrically about how odd Johnny Foreigner is.
Host Stefan Gates began by outlining his self-appointed mission to discover the world's great feasts "from the palaces of Rajasthan" to, rather worryingly, "the graveyards of Mexico". This second episode saw Gates eyeing up the Naked Man festival in Japan - not a celebration of homoerotic cannibalism but an occasion "where 10,000 normally respectable men go on a drunken rampage in a desperate attempt to banish bad luck". Riiight.
His early observation that "Japan is a confusing place" was unpromising - Gates genuinely seemed to think he was the first to notice a contrast between the buttoned-up Sony salary-men and doe-eyed samurai schoolgirls that together comprise 98% of the native population.
A snickering segment on penis worship eventually gave way to the more intriguing 'baby sumo' contest, although sadly that too did not live up to billing. Yes, 300 infants squared off in a public arena, quite possibly with vast sums of Yakuza blood money bet on the outcome. But rather than battering their barely weaned rivals into submission, shame and social exclusion, the winners were simply the toddlers that started crying first, in a pretty fair approximation of Britain's Got Talent.
At least the Naked Man festival itself did what it said on the tin and the four-tonne rice cake that made a late cameo had more charisma than our host.
Tune in next week as Gates finds 'the real Mexico' by downing tequilas from a sombrero and munching cocaine-topped tacos.
A similar charge can be levelled at Feasts (BBC Four, Wednesdays), which seemed to promise vomitariums, Lucrezia Borgia-style mass poisonings and real-life versions of the 'snake surprise' from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Instead we got a nerd in a Parka waxing not very lyrically about how odd Johnny Foreigner is.
Host Stefan Gates began by outlining his self-appointed mission to discover the world's great feasts "from the palaces of Rajasthan" to, rather worryingly, "the graveyards of Mexico". This second episode saw Gates eyeing up the Naked Man festival in Japan - not a celebration of homoerotic cannibalism but an occasion "where 10,000 normally respectable men go on a drunken rampage in a desperate attempt to banish bad luck". Riiight.
His early observation that "Japan is a confusing place" was unpromising - Gates genuinely seemed to think he was the first to notice a contrast between the buttoned-up Sony salary-men and doe-eyed samurai schoolgirls that together comprise 98% of the native population.
A snickering segment on penis worship eventually gave way to the more intriguing 'baby sumo' contest, although sadly that too did not live up to billing. Yes, 300 infants squared off in a public arena, quite possibly with vast sums of Yakuza blood money bet on the outcome. But rather than battering their barely weaned rivals into submission, shame and social exclusion, the winners were simply the toddlers that started crying first, in a pretty fair approximation of Britain's Got Talent.
At least the Naked Man festival itself did what it said on the tin and the four-tonne rice cake that made a late cameo had more charisma than our host.
Tune in next week as Gates finds 'the real Mexico' by downing tequilas from a sombrero and munching cocaine-topped tacos.
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