It’s not 10 seconds into Lent and a devilish French chef is thrusting a cream-topped finger into a cooing mademoiselle’s mouth. There’s not a lot about this series that’s subtle.
But delightful, yes. Especially if you maintain a leave attitude toward facts, even while watching a show based on a historical figure. Lent highlights the banquet halls and boudoirs conquered by Marie-Antoine Carême, frequently cited as one of the founders of high kitchenas well as “the first celebrity chef.” (That moniker is in the title of Ian Kelly’s 2004 nonfiction book Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef, upon which this series is nominally based.)
It’s not 10 seconds into Lent and a devilish French chef is thrusting a cream-topped finger into a cooing mademoiselle’s mouth. There’s not a lot about this series that’s subtle.
But delightful, yes. Especially if you maintain a leave attitude toward facts, even while watching a show based on a historical figure. Lent highlights the banquet halls and boudoirs conquered by Marie-Antoine Carême, frequently cited as one of the founders of high kitchenas well as “the first celebrity chef.” (That moniker is in the title of Ian Kelly’s 2004 nonfiction book Cooking for Kings: The Life of Antonin Carême, the First Celebrity Chef, upon which this series is nominally based.)
The show is among an increasing number of co-productions between Apple TV+ and France, and I suppose everyone involved wanted to give an international audience what it expects: rich food, lusty romps, and Napoleon.
The writers (led by Davide Serino) kick history up a notch, to quote another famous chefpositioning Carême not just as the man who first filled puff pastry with savories and popularized the tall white hat, but also as a spy, working on behalf of the Machiavellian political fixer Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.
While Carême did achieve greatness in Talleyrand’s kitchen, there is no evidence to support that he was involved in any of his employer’s shifting factionalism—despite it being the main course of the show’s story. It nonetheless makes for rip-roaring television. Once the flavors of Lent’s eight episodes begin to marry, the show transforms into something like the original Mission: Impossiblebut instead of disguises and microfilm, the spy craft is crème fraiche and truffled capon.
The contortions each chapter’s script takes to show how Talleyrand deploys the crafty Carême —passing secret code through the placement of a leg of lamb on a menu, for example—is exactly the kind of preposterousness I look for in a frothy television series. Just as you should never doubt that a French dessert can get more decadent, never doubt this show will get more wonderfully ludicrous.
The series is led by the dashing Benjamin Voisin, whose haircut and outfits make him look as if he’s playing keyboards for Duran Duran in between takes. It’s not an intentional anachronism, but a deliberate disregard for stark realism. The same could be said for the multicultural casting. Though one can find examples to rationalize this modern approach—Napoleon famously had a Black generalso maybe he also had a Black aide-de-camp who did his pastry-related errands—my recommendation is to not bother or care.
Alice da luz and benjamin voisin in Lent.Apple TV+
Yes, it is unrealistic that Carême would have a young Black woman as his second-in-command; his girlfriend would be played by an actress with Algerian heritage; and one of Paris’s other great culinary masters would be an older Black man, and that no one would ever make a comment about any of this. But it is arguably more unrealistic that Napoleon’s passage from first consul to emperor would be due in part to the succulence of a surprise veal chop. (That moment comes during a cooking competition with rules eerily similar to the series Chopped.) The show knows what it’s doing.
But Carême never asked to be crossing borders and sneaking around palaces. The problem is that his gifts are too valuable to a scheming villain like Talleyrand, played with an exaggerated elegance by Jérémie Renier.
The trouble begins in the first episode. Carême is working in the galleys at a vast, orgiastic soirée when Napoleon (who isn’t in the series all that much) suffers some kind of seizure. Carême’s familiarity with herbs isn’t just for sauces; it is frequently medicinal, and he saves the day with some sort of elixir. This is what gets him on the Napoleon’s radar, though he’s already a known quantity to Talleyrand, an important figure in all things political and gourmand. (Also an ex-bishop with several children, plus a mistress who likes nothing more than to bathe in diaphanous gowns.)
Carême rejects an offer to work for Napoleon; he’d rather stay with his stepfather, Bailey; devise architecturally innovative pastries; make love to his girlfriend; and occasionally dispense philosophical remarks. But soon Bailey is arrested on trumped-up charges of treason (sure, he’s not the biggest Napoleon fan, but he’s not a threat) so Carême turns to the influential Talleyrand for help. Next thing you know, he’s doing whatever the skeevy nobleman asks, in the hopes that it will lead to Bailey’s freedom.
Yes luz and voisin in Lent.Apple TV+
Cut to a few episodes later, and this means coitus with Josephine in the icehouse, where Talleyrand knows they’ll be discovered, so he can blackmail her into saving the institution of divorce. Trust me, it all makes sense on screen.
And this is just one of the wacky schemes Carême is forced to perform. Meanwhile, the Inspector Javert-esque chief of police, Crazyis on Carême’s trail, connecting him to a foiled terrorist attack made on the first consul. Fouché is played by the marvelous Micha Lescot, one of the great sniveling worm performances of recent history. (Imagine Rowan Atkinson’s Black Adder, but not a joke.) Every time he’s on screen is a delight.
The show’s directors include Martin Bourboulon, who recently released a well-received version of The Three Musketeersand Laila Marrakchi, who contributed to the remarkable Parisian jazz series The Eddy. The house style is to keep everything moving, ensure the costumes are over-the-top, shoot the meals and desserts lustily, and limit the frequent coupling to “heaving and breathy” but never anything vulgar.
The climax is set at Napoleon’s coronation celebration where Carême is thought to have led the culinary charge. The show unsubtly positions the grand fête as a military campaign, and it is only here, at the end of the first season, that we finally hear the phrase “oui, chef!” that any fan of The Bear has been waiting for the whole time. (Like a good meal, that cathartic exclamation is an experience best shared. My wife and I were hootin’ and hollerin’ on the couch when it finally came around.)
A lovely thing about Lent is that it actually has a satisfying ending. A door is certainly open to a second season, with the drumbeats of war deflating the proverbial soufflé. I’d very much like to see Antonin Carême break bread with Pierre Bezukhov; if that ever happens, I think they’d have a lot to offer one another.
I could in Lent.Apple TV+
Dazzling political rivals and allies with food (or at least kitchen appliances) is a part of actual statecraft, so maybe Lent is actually less far-fetched than it at first seems. I’m sure votes have been swayed by things less silly than how a cake in the shape of the Egyptian pyramids is interpreted at a specific moment in time. What’s most delicious, though, is the show’s cavalier attitude. When you are this irresistible, you can be.
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