Comedic Food History Series on Hulu

For all of you who use Hulu, I must share my new food-TV fave: a British series with the poor title "Supersizers Go . . . and the name of a decade or era. In this series, a male food critic and a female editor with a quirky wit adopt the costume, social position, and gender roles of a specific period in British history and eat their way through a week of the era's food prepared by a professional chef. The meals include both what the couple would eat at home and iconic meals of the era. For instance, the 1940's episode includes both a treatment of rationing and one of the menus that Winston Churchill ate while at work - quite a feast. An episode on the French Revolution takes the action across the channel, and naturally, there is a Roman episode. (After all, what producer could resist the shock value of a vomitorium?)

Most of the meals of earlier eras make for the kind of humor that I, and perhaps many other LTH-ers enjoy. The thought of no coffee or tea for breakfast is one thing, but the need to substitute beer for water is quite another. Most of the unfamiliar foods of earlier eras have been made accessible through nose-to-tail eating, but some of the packaged and processed "modern" foods are groan-evoking. Both re-enacters are miserable at turns, not least because of the gross gender inequities and burdens of strict social roles, however, things begin to turn around in the 70's. There are interesting historical tidbits, though it comes as no surprise to me that Margaret Thatcher is remembered by a colleague as utterly uninterested in food.

They used to play this on COOKING Channel when the channel launched. The female comedian is really funny in some of the costumes.

It's on YouTube, too -- an entire Supersizers channel. I've thus far followed them to ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, French Revolution, and the Edwardian era (which offers the largest number of meals so far that I'd like to eat).

Thanks for the head's up on this series. I have watched quite a few of these episodes over the past few days on Youtube and have really enjoyed them. In particular, I like her sense of humor.

She's a professional comedian and he's a popular food critic -- so she's funnier, but he clearly enjoys the eating, on the whole, more than she does. I think they make a good team. And I love that they bring in all the historians and experts--so one actually learns something in most episodes.