Sophie Dahl — former model, writer, and the granddaughter of Roald Dahl — now has her very own cooking show on BBC2, The Delicious Miss Dahl. The whole flirtatious, fluttering, and confessional tone takes cues from Nigella Lawson, but there's this whole twee, homemaker shabby-chic aesthetic — normally found in places like Etsy and the blogs — that really hasn't made it onto television. She even takes us antiquing in the search for a proper Art Deco tumbler for her martinis.
And Dahl takes it so very far: Her recipe box is sorted by categories like Stressed, Romantic, Celebratory, and Melancholy (see the slideshow above), and in completely non-food related segments, she espouses how romantic train stations are and walks wistfully through graveyards, saying "I think people might that wanting to spend time in a graveyard for the romance of it is a bit ghoulish and Wednesday Adams, maudlin and sinister to some. I think it's totally fascinating." And then she'll finish each show by reading poetry to you.
Clearly men are not the target audience — or maybe they were, what with the revealing low-cut top and all — but Dahl comes off charming and effusive. The show is remarkable if only because it's different than anything else out there. How many cooking shows do you know of out there that use the Smiths and Feist in their soundtrack?
Here are a couple of videos so you can get the idea:
Intro to The Delicious Miss Dahl
Not-Food in The Delicious Miss Dahl
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