The 2021 movie Boiling Point has been made into a new TV series that shows us the pressure of working in a busy restaurant kitchen. Will it match the success of the critically-acclaimed film and could it lead to a new trend for drama series based on chefs and cooking?
The Way That Chefs Have Entered Popular Culture
The world of cooking has mainly been shown on-screen in reality shows where celebrity chefs mentor and evaluate newcomers, as well as in traditional cookery programmes. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the world’s first cookery show was simply called Cookery and was presented by chef Philip Harben from 1946 onwards. Celebrity chefs have also been around for a long time, with Delia Smith’s recipes famously causing the price of certain ingredients to rise due to increased demand.
More recently, the success of shows like MasterChef and Gordon Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen has helped the top celebrity chefs reach new areas of popular culture. For example, Ramsay’s show is included in the list of online slots at Paddy Power Games, where players need to try and get winning combinations of symbols. This means that Ramsay is featured alongside movies like Ted and TV shows including Deal or No Deal. Hell’s Kitchen’s casino game shows how the franchises can now expand into different types of entertainment, as well as boosting the chef’s restaurant chain and TV career.
What Do We Know About Boiling Point?
The original Boiling Point movie was based on a 2019 short film of the same name, both directed by Philip Barantini. The full movie was made as a one-shot film and showed us life working in a restaurant kitchen in London. It was well-received by critics and received four nominations for the 75th British Academy Film Awards.
So far, five episodes of the TV series have been made, with Barantini directing two of them. It’s set six months after the events of the movie, with Carly (played by Vinette Robinson) taking over a kitchen and working with many of the members of staff who featured in the first movie. This means the return of characters such as Andy, who is played by Stephen Graham and was the head chef in the movie version before he suffered a heart attack at the end.
What Might This Mean for Future Shows?
This preview by the Radio Times of the new series suggests that the workplace might be calmer with Carly in charge, but that complicated personal relationships are going to make up a lot of the drama this time. The focus on personal relationships perhaps suggests how cooker-based dramas could go in the future, with the possibility of following all the characters at work and then during the rest of their day.
Boiling Point is set to be released later in 2023, on BBC One and the iPlayer. Anyone who enjoyed the movie of the same title might like to check out this new series and then look out for any similar shows that follow it. This list from Vulture of the most stressful shows set in restaurants shows the variety that’s possible in this genre, ranging from Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, to Sweetbitter and more.
If Boiling Point proves to be a hit, we can probably expect to see more drama series based on the tense atmosphere and constant pressure experienced in restaurant kitchens.