Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 7 August

Julia (Goldfarb, 2022-23)

Show after show these days seem to be post-apocalyptic retro-futuristic dysto­pi­as, hunts for true crime seri­al killers, tam­ing dragons or brand name sci-fi epics.

Yet, the most purely enter­tain­ing show we have watched in this new ‘golden age’ of stream­ing TV was The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, a com­edy about a Jewish single-mom build­ing a career as a stand-up com­ic in 1960s New York. Five sea­sons of joy!

When I read about Julia, a light­hearted series based on the unlikely TV career of “French” chef Julia Childs, I hoped it would give me some more of that Maisel-verse.

Well, des­pite hav­ing about half the budget, Julia def­in­itely scratched that itch and it was a great way to end every troubled week for the last few months.

English act­ress Sarah Lancashire leads as Julia Child – a role made fam­ous to recent view­ers by Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia (2009) – and like Streep she mani­fests the voice and phys­ic­al­ity of this 2m tall woman but unlike Streep she gives us the uncer­tainty and vul­ner­ab­il­ity of a woman break­ing new ground.

Despite the show hav­ing a sit­com vibe to it – each epis­ode is named after a dish and the hijinks in the kit­chen are very much part of the charm – many of the char­ac­ters are based on real people. Like Mrs. Maisel, the ensemble is a key part of the show’s charm.

Significant real people, in fact. Child’s agent, Judith Jones (Fiona Glascott) not only shep­her­ded Mastering the Art of French Cooking into book­stores but also dis­covered Anne Frank’s diar­ies in the Knopf slush pile, and edited Camus, Sartre and Updike.

Her pro­du­cer, Russ Morash (Fran Kranz) thought he was slum­ming it with cook­ing and wanted to make civil rights doc­u­ment­ar­ies but went on to invent the mod­ern home renov­a­tion show with This Old House.

Other recur­ring char­ac­ters are David Hyde Pierce, as devoted hus­band Paul, and behind-the-counter volun­teers Avis De Voto (Bebe Neuwirth) – destined to become a suc­cess­ful cook­ing edit­or in her own right – and new mom Dorothy Zinberg (Lindsay Broad), who would go on to teach at Harvard Medical School.

Another unsung woman in the show – although fic­tion­al this time – is Brittany Bradford as Alice Nayman, determ­ined to break down the walls of pre­ju­dice that pre­vent women’s stor­ies from being giv­en air time.

Actually cook­ing and eat­ing the food in the show each week would prob­ably prove just as leth­al as the con­tent of any of the more hard-boiled dra­mas stream­ing at the moment but the pleas­ure in the com­pany of nice, well-mannered, decent and optim­ist­ic people coun­ter­acts all that cream and sugar.

I’m sorry there are only two seasons.

Where to watch Julia

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa: Streaming on Neon

Australia: Streaming on Binge and FoxtelNow

Canada: Digital pur­chase from Apple

Ireland & UK: Streaming on NowTV

USA: Streaming on Max