THE WINDSORS, C4, 10pm
I ENJOY a cruel joke as much as the next person, particularly when it’s aimed at the Establishment, but even I flinched at some of the gags in this new sitcom which mercilessly mocks the Royals.
I may have flinched but it didn’t stop me laughing, and it’s surely a measure of brave satire if you feel a twinge of discomfort.
A furious Camilla wonders why Wills and Kate grab all the attention. Seeing yet another fawning headline she rages that “the Great British scum” will want to skip Charles and have William crowned instead. If only she could have a baby, she thinks, and upset the line of succession. But Charles, played by Harry Enfield, reminds her she’s “not had a period since Wham! split up.”
Elsewhere, a tipsy Fergie gets mistaken for Mick Hucknall and we learn Kate is actually a Gypsy who used to battle Rottweilers in a Morrison’s car park.
The jokes might be distasteful, but this is satire and the attacks are aimed at a family who’re secure and pampered. They can take it, I’m sure. If not, they can always give up and get a real job.
RICK STEIN’S LONG WEEKENDS, BBC2, 9pm
THIS week, the chef is in Berlin to explore modern German cuisine, though he reminds us that the food we think of as “German” is actually Austrian.
Stein covers the whole spectrum of “German” food tonight, from massive roast pork knuckles, to the famous Currywurst sold on every street corner, to the avant-garde stuff like strawberry vinegar, liquidised watercress, and fried leeks whose “ends curl up like flowers in the sun” before being stacked on the plate like “a mini Stonehenge".
Berlin’s complicated relationship with immigrants has made its mark on the capital’s cuisine: “food is a by-product of events” so the huge influx of Turkish “guest-workers” in the 1970s , there to rebuild a battered Berlin, brought their own food and culture, and so Berlin is now expert in doner kebabs.
And is this fine food served somewhere as commonplace as a restaurant? No fear! Rick also meets “guerrilla chefs” who appear from nowhere one weekend to take over an old crematorium, then vanish again.
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