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Restaurant critic Giles Coren and writer and comedian Sue Perkins experience the food culture of years gone by.
Seasons
Episode 1
Restaurant critic Giles Coren and writer and comedian Sue Perkins experience the food culture of years gone by.
In this programme they go back to the 1980s, the years of their adolescence. Living in a converted loft on the Thames, they sample the high life of a couple of yuppies. To a soundtrack of 80s classics including the Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran, ABC and Billy Bragg, they power-lunch their way through the decade, knocking back champagne while talking loudly into their oversized mobile phones.
In this programme, they go back to medieval England to live the life of a Lord and Lady in their country manor. Starting life in 1066, Giles takes on the guise of a Norman conqueror, complete with broadsword and chainmail. Sue wears pointy hats and is a damsel in deep distress, as Giles has been given her manor house and all the lands around it. He is also on a mission to woo her.
Giles and Sue go for a journey back to Revolutionary France in the 1780s. Donning wigs and corsets, Giles and Sue find out what King Louis XVI ate, why Marie Antoinette was so hated, and how the Revolution was instrumental in creating the first restaurant and first restaurant critic.
This time, Giles and Sue discover the culinary delights of the bright young things in the 1920s. Chef for the week is food writer Allegra McEvedy, providing aspic-inspired cookery. 'It' girl Sue gets a real bob and Giles dresses in the dandyish fashions of the period. During their 1920s week, they go from one social engagement to another: cocktails at The Ritz, the charleston at Cafe de Paris and motor racing at Brooklands.
Giles and Sue go back to the 1950s, an era started on rations and ended by Prime Minister Harold MacMillan remarking that 'we'd never had it so good'.
This time they travel back to the early days of the Roman Empire. Living in a splendid villa, Senator Giles dons a toga while Vestal Virgin Sue dresses in tunics and keeps the fires of Rome burning.
