If there's one word to best describe Sophie Dahl it might be 'lifelike'. She has the right features in the usual places, moves in a realistic enough fashion and gamely attempts human speech.
Unless you're her jazz-dwarf hubby Jamie Cullum, the word might not be 'delicious' though. And it certainly wouldn't be 'TV presenter', only partly because that's two words.
The Delicious Miss Dahl (BBC Two, 8:30pm Tuesday) was undercut by her doll-like demeanour, which hinted at sentience without ever really convincing. If this were a regular cookery show, it'd be fine having a largely expressionless Fembot alternating her Kitchen Banter app between its two factory settings of 'sassy' and 'sultry'.
But this was the rollout of Nigella 2.0, as much about her as the food, with the button-eyed Dahl - two parts sex to one part cookie dough - mixing quips about dirty Martinis with the toothiest smile since Alien. (In Sophie's kitchen, no-one can hear you scream.)
Dahl told us she'd "always been interested in food" and particularly in "eating it". Weirdo. And while she said the right things about "happy-making" mood food, it was a bit rich having a luminously beautiful former model talking about "the joy of cooking for one". Just wait 'til you're fighting the dog for last night's Pot Noodle leftovers, love.
All in all, it rather made one pine for the days of chaste Delia, when a courgette was just a courgette and not a Freudian prop.
Less glamorous by far was Chocolate: The Bitter Truth (BBC One, 9pm Wednesday), a Panorama special on the kids trafficked across national borders, sometimes by family, to farm cocoa in west Africa.
It's been done before, but rarely as poignantly as when our host fed victims of slave labour their very first Kit Kat. In fact, Nestlé got plenty of implied flak not what it needed after that gruesome Greenpeace video with Kit Kat's red and white livery used as a recurring visual signifier of consumer excess.
But while Fairtrade isn't perfect, it's a very good start and slating those trying to help seems a bit off.
There are problems in Africa even bigger than child labour famine, AIDS, civil war that even a dirty Martini can't sort overnight.
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Unless you're her jazz-dwarf hubby Jamie Cullum, the word might not be 'delicious' though. And it certainly wouldn't be 'TV presenter', only partly because that's two words.
The Delicious Miss Dahl (BBC Two, 8:30pm Tuesday) was undercut by her doll-like demeanour, which hinted at sentience without ever really convincing. If this were a regular cookery show, it'd be fine having a largely expressionless Fembot alternating her Kitchen Banter app between its two factory settings of 'sassy' and 'sultry'.
But this was the rollout of Nigella 2.0, as much about her as the food, with the button-eyed Dahl - two parts sex to one part cookie dough - mixing quips about dirty Martinis with the toothiest smile since Alien. (In Sophie's kitchen, no-one can hear you scream.)
Dahl told us she'd "always been interested in food" and particularly in "eating it". Weirdo. And while she said the right things about "happy-making" mood food, it was a bit rich having a luminously beautiful former model talking about "the joy of cooking for one". Just wait 'til you're fighting the dog for last night's Pot Noodle leftovers, love.
All in all, it rather made one pine for the days of chaste Delia, when a courgette was just a courgette and not a Freudian prop.
Less glamorous by far was Chocolate: The Bitter Truth (BBC One, 9pm Wednesday), a Panorama special on the kids trafficked across national borders, sometimes by family, to farm cocoa in west Africa.
It's been done before, but rarely as poignantly as when our host fed victims of slave labour their very first Kit Kat. In fact, Nestlé got plenty of implied flak not what it needed after that gruesome Greenpeace video with Kit Kat's red and white livery used as a recurring visual signifier of consumer excess.
But while Fairtrade isn't perfect, it's a very good start and slating those trying to help seems a bit off.
There are problems in Africa even bigger than child labour famine, AIDS, civil war that even a dirty Martini can't sort overnight.
More from this column
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