Boiling Point’s smartest decision was to ditch the film’s big gimmick

Stephen Graham’s 2021 film was lauded for its accomplished use of one long take. The BBC’s new spin-off nixes this flashy camerawork – but it’s all the better for it, writes Louis Chilton

Brought to the boil: Stephen Graham as Andy in the culinary drama ‘Boiling Point’ (BBC / Boiling Point TV Limited)

For the first 10 minutes and 59 seconds of Boiling Point, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were being served last night’s leftovers. The project – a dark, tense drama set in the kitchen of a fine-cuisine restaurant – started out as a 20-minute short, before being adapted into an acclaimed 90-minute feature film, and now, finally, as a four-part BBC series.

In its previous incarnation, Boiling Point had been characterised by its signature visual move: an unbroken “one-shot” take that lasts for the duration of the film. The movie tracked the descent of ace chef Andy (Stephen Graham) as he contends with a fractious workplace environment, a disintegrating family life, and addiction, all over the course of one evening depicted in real time. It was enough to invoke heart palpitations – for both Andy and the viewer.

The BBC series starts out in the same visual style, with the camera gliding around the kitchen set, introducing us to its location and characters: under-the-cosh head chef Carly (Vinette Robinson), fiery sous chef Freeman (Ray Panthaki) and flailing newbie Johnny (Stephen Odubola) among them. So far, so familiar. But then, at the 11-minute mark, we get the opening credits. When the episode resumes, the single-take dogma has been discarded completely. In the time it takes to flash-fry a prawn, Boiling Point jettisoned its main selling point. But it paid off: getting rid of the one-take gimmick is one of the smarter decisions its creators (Graham, writer James Cummings, and director Philip Barantini) could have made.