Television review

LAST NIGHT

To watch Feast (C4), you might think that eating was some kind of unappealing social obligation - something on a par with filling in your tax return or using dental floss regularly. So concertedly does it attempt to sell you the pleasures of the flesh, in fact, that, after a while, you wonder whether you're being scammed in some way - whether the mouth-watering Novelli tiramisu, which gets its own music video, isn't some kind of plot. Certainly, they want you to understand that gourmandising is a moral duty. "It's all about how you feel in your soul and heart," fluted Jeremy Lee, getting in first with the holistic blarney that often afflicts cookery programmes these days (and incidentally revealing that the programme's researchers had managed to track down the culinary equivalent of Dale Winton). His explanation of how to make a fricassee of rabbit and roasted peppers was the campest bit of television I've seen since Peter Purves got his head stuck in a naval rating's jerkin and went down with a fit of the giggles (the lawyers would like me to point out that the naval rating wasn't in the garment at the time).

Jeremy, a chef at the Blueprint Cafe, has clearly been adopted as the series' cuddly toy. But the real stars of Feast are Noir, two unembarrassable men in black suits and shades. Who divide up the commentary. Between themselves. In a way that reminds you. OF KIDS' TELEVISION! (they generally shout the last bit in unison). They also perform some sequences as musical numbers, so that a survey of Barcelona's culinary offerings was transformed into a surreal performance from Whose Line Is It Anyway? "Do a Food and Drink location report in the style of Right Said Fred!" someone had shouted from the audience, and, astonishingly, they had obliged. "Ripe figs to colour the summer night... from the hills of Catalonia, sweetened by the sun and caressed by the gentle breeze of the Costa Dorada," they crooned, as the drum machine fidgeted away on the soundtrack. "So many colours, so many textures, woven together like a tapestry of epicurean JOY!" Cue the chorus and some wonky crash-zooms of Barcelona beauties.

Just in case this had made you hungry (the air circulating around your open mouth might have acted as an aperitif), the next item was a finger- wagging polemic about the iniquities of the Herod Subsidy, a pointedly named government incentive which pays farmers to slaughter male dairy calves as fast as possible. This item was actually quite interesting - if you could get past the slightly manic aspect of its presenter, James Erlichman, who clambered over barbed-wire fences while delivering his script as though he was on his way to punch you on the nose. Paradoxically, one of the alternatives to this offensive practice (several of the animals appeared emaciated, presumably because there is no profit in caring for them until they are slaughtered) is to eat them about nine months later - when they have turned into rose beef. I'm certainly willing to do whatever I can to help.

Like Feast, The Air Show (BBC2), a magazine programme for the aviation enthusiast, also comes with a rave soundtrack - now a television shorthand for buzzy vitality. As a small boy myself, I quite enjoyed it, apart from the tedious report on jet lag and how to avoid it (don't they know that the core audience for this programme wants to get jet lag?). I have a couple of doubts though: if, as the presenter promised, we were going to be given the "most exciting stories from the world of aviation", then why was was the opening line-up so timidly generalist in its approach? I like jumbo jets too, but they could hardly be described as the latest thing. Secondly, is BBC2 really the right place for an unquestioning sales- pitch for Lockheed Martin's new military helicopter? The producers had been seduced by the promise of exclusive access into giving airtime to a company spokesman (was his name really Orville Wright?) who hymned the world-beating qualities of his submarine killer. Doing this sort of thing for Oasis is quite bad enough, surely?