Culture

In his ruefully funny 2012 novel The Man Who Forgot His Wife, John O’Farrell compares the increasingly uncivilized process of divorce to war: “In 1939 the RAF (Royal Air Force) thought it was immoral to bomb the Black Forest to deprive the Germans of timber. But by 1945 they were deliberately creating firestorms to kill as many civilians as possible.” As the title suggests, the starry new divorce-based drama War makes a similar comparison – except that here the unhappy couple are cutting straight to Dresden. The show began as it meant to go on: which is to say, glitteringly. At a London awards ceremony of ineffable poshness, Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) was named Pioneer of the Year for creating one of the world’s biggest yet nicest social media platforms.

I lasted all of five minutes with Netflix’s tasting menu-length Being Gordon Ramsay. This surprised me, because I’ve long had a bit of a soft spot for the irascible, crevice-faced, sweary old ham. I know that all reality TV is fake but I’ve always quite enjoyed watching carrot-top pretending to lose his rag yet again in some rat-infested culinary cesspit before transforming it, in the space of a month, into a Michelin three-star. Ramsay no longer even pretends that his programs are anything more than extended plugs for his brand But the dishonesty and contrivance and brazen commercialism of this autohagiography are just too much to stomach.