BBC Two announces major new food season

Presented by a range of BBC Two talent, including Raymond Blanc, Kate Humble, Giles Coren, Alice Roberts, Lorraine Pascale, Tom Kerridge and the Hairy Bikers, the programmes will look back over 50 years of food history as well as look ahead to what we could all be eating in the future.

Kim Shillinglaw, Controller of BBC Two and BBC Four, says: "BBC Two has always been the home of great food and this season follows in that rich tradition, with an intelligent, lively range of programmes. Food tells us so much about ourselves, and these shows, packed with content, reveal how the food we put on our plates shapes who we are." 

Alison Kirkham, BBC Head of Commissioning for Factual Features and Formats, says: "This is an exciting and rich season of programmes. From how the post war evolution in food has shaped family life; to which extreme diets to adopt if you want to live longer - we show how the food we choose to eat constantly influences the sort of society we live in."

In Back In Time For Dinner, Giles Coren documents the experiences of one family which is fast-forwarded through a 50-year revolution in the way we eat. In Kew On A Plate, two-Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc, joined by Kate Humble, will transform an area of the world famous botanical gardens into an historic fruit and vegetable garden. In Britain’s Favourite Foods: Are They Good For You?, Alice Roberts will reveal the truth behind what food Britain really buys and how these choices affect our bodies and health. Britain’s Favourite Meals And How To Cook Them, presented by the Hairy Bikers and Lorraine Pascale, will find out Britain’s favourite meals before the chefs give them their own fresh twists. And finally, in Eat To Live Forever With Giles Coren, the food critic takes up three extreme diet regimes in a bid to prolong his life.

Notes to Editors

• Back In Time For Dinner is a 6x60-minute series made by Wall To Wall. The Executive Producers are Alison Kirkham for the BBC and Leanne Klein for Wall To Wall. Presented by Giles Coren and Polly Russell.
• Kew On A Plate is a 4x60-minute series for BBC Two made by Lion Televison. The Executive Producers are Alison Kirkham for the BBC and Donna Clark and Richard Bradley for Lion Television. Presented by Raymond Blanc and Kate Humble.
• Eat To Live Forever With Giles Coren, 1x60, is produced by the BBC and the Executive producer is Lisa Ausden. Presented by Giles Coren.
• Britain’s Favourite Foods: Are They Good For You?, 1x60’, is made by the BBC and the Executive Producer is Helen Thomas. Presented by Professor Alice Roberts.
• Britain’s Favourite Meals And How To Cook Them, 1x60’, is made by Ricochet. The Executive Producers are Tom Edwards for the BBC and Simon Knight for Ricochet. Presented by Lorraine Pascale and the Hairy Bikers.
• Food and Drink produced by BBC Executive Producer Robi Dutta. Presented by Tom Kerridge

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Food season programme information

Back In Time For Dinner

In this innovative and entertaining six-part series, one modern British family will be fast-forwarded through 50 years of food history to explore how changes in what and where we eat have helped shape who we are. The family's own kitchen will become a time machine, moving forward at the rate of one decade per week and taking them from the post war austerity of 1950 through to the slick modern convenience of today. The family will experience the new foods and kitchen technology, cooking fads and dining fashions across each era - from life with no fridge to meals at the touch of a button; domestic drudgery to labour saving appliances and meat and two veg to haute cuisine.

The food the family eats across the series is based on an extraordinary historical resource - the National Food Survey – which ran from 1940 onwards and meticulously records in diary form what thousands of British families ate for breakfast lunch and dinner each day – from the sparse bread, dripping, tea and milk served up for breakfast by a housewife in Lancashire to her husband and three sons in 1950 to the soya bean stroganoff, brown rice and home-made yogurt dished up by a mother in Cambridge 25 years later. The transformation of our domestic lives over the last 50 years can all be traced through the diaries - from the meals we ate, who cooked the food, and how frequently we shopped for it, to the arrival of fridges, freezers, supermarkets and microwaves.

Each episode will also see the family meet the famous faces who helped shape our food lives, like Mary Berry demonstrating an electric oven and testing it by baking a Victoria Sponge - a job she actually used to do in 1950s Somerset, Dave Myers telling them how the delivery of a fridge transformed his childhood and Ken Hom introducing them to the joys of Chinese cooking.

The Back In Time For Dinner family will be guided on their journey by food critic Giles Coren and food historian Polly Russell – who’ll be setting the rules they must live by and bringing them new gadgets, ingredients and products relevant to the decade along the way. They’ll also be exploring the bigger story behind some key foods – from fish fingers and roast chicken, to the Pot noodle, chilled ready meal and our national love affair with wine.

As our family chop, cook, shop and eat their way through more than half a century of food, Back In Time For Dinner will reveal how a transformation in what we ate and how we ate it has radically changed all of our lives. We'll see how the arrival of convenience food went hand in hand with women's lib, how new technology slashed cooking times and sounded the death knell of the family meal and how a driving down in the cost of food freed us up to kit out our kitchens in fancy gadgets, eat out regularly and travel abroad, widening our culinary horizons to embrace Thai, sushi and any number of exotic cuisines unimaginable to our grandparents.

Back In Time For Dinner is a 6x60-minute series for BBC Two made by Wall To Wall. The Executive Producers are Alison Kirkham for the BBC and Emily Shields for Wall To Wall.

Kew On A Plate

For Kew On A Plate, a hugely ambitious 4x60-minute series for BBC Two, the BBC has been granted special permission for two Michelin Starred chef Raymond Blanc to transform an area of Kew into a sumptuous fruit and vegetable garden, which will be created on the site of what was once Queen Victoria’s royal kitchen garden. Raymond will be joined by Kate Humble, and together they will explore the fascinating history and provenance of the heritage varieties of fruit and vegetables that Raymond plans to grow, across all four seasons. Raymond will then go on to cook delicious recipes using the seasonal produce he creates.

The series will unlock the fascinating history of Britain’s fruit and vegetables. Every species of fruit and every type of vegetable that ends up on our plate has its own story – of exploration, obsessive collection, invention, scientific ingenuity, exotic fashion, propaganda and changing tastes. It will also examine the cutting edge science at Kew involving many of these plants and discover what surprising secrets lie beneath their skins.

As Raymond delights over the first new potato harvest of the season, heralding the arrival of spring, Kate explores the roller-coaster history of this most ubiquitous of vegetable; from exotic 16th century marvel, to unloved food for swine, to our most cherished staple.

We’ll learn of the pineapple mania that gripped Britain as people competed to be the first to grow the fruit, sparing no expense in their endeavours; discover how tomatoes were once considered to be highly poisonous; and how a French spy’s discovery in South America lead to the development of our garden strawberry.

We’ll find out how the commercial cultivation of mushrooms began on manure piles in the caverns and mines under Paris, and learn of the obsession that led to the creation of the Gooseberry Clubs of Georgian England.

The series will uncover how the humble turnip helped spark an agricultural revolution, how unscrupulous manufacturers dyed their canned peas a brilliant green using toxic copper sulphate, and how the ingenuity of a twelve year old slave allowed the manufacture of the world’s favourite flavour of ice cream – vanilla.

After the filming, the vegetable garden will be open to the public to come and enjoy a unique opportunity to experience this exciting project first hand.

Kew On A Plate is a 4x60-minute series for BBC Two made by Lion Television. The Executive Producers are Alison Kirkham for the BBC and Donna Clark and Richard Bradley for Lion Television.

Eat To Live Forever With Giles Coren

In Eat To Live Forever With Giles Coren, the food critic takes up three extreme diet regimes in a bid push the very limits of life expectancy. Giles’s search to find a diet which might extend his life comes after his great-grandfather lived to the grand old age of 93. His grandfather passed away aged 76 and his father, Alan, died aged 69. The Coren men are bucking the global trend of living longer so Giles, now in his mid-40s, wants to find out what he can do to avoid a premature death.

In this witty, entertaining and informative 60-minute documentary, Giles investigates how not to die young with the help of some extreme regimes. He’ll meet people from around the world whose pursuit of longevity is an obsession that dominates every aspect of their lives. It won’t be an easy ride for Giles: as a food critic, who has eaten in some of the world’s finest restaurants, he’ll have to make sacrifices. He’ll meet ardent devotees of extreme food regimes but how much suffering will be involved, and can any of these extreme regimes actually extend Giles’s life?

He undertakes the calorie restriction diet, meeting followers of this near-starvation regime, some of whom aim to live to 150. He then takes up the paleo diet, aka the stoneage diet, which consists only of foods hunted, fished or gathered by our Paleolithic ancestors. Giles ends his journey with a regime consisting of almost 100 per cent fruit, the aptly named fruitarian diet.

Throughout the process, Giles’s health is monitored by his doctor, who helps Giles assess the impact these unusual regimes are having on his body.

Can Giles be persuaded to change his ways by the well-being and enthusiasm of the people he meets? Can he hack the strict self-imposed rules under which they live? Will he discover the secret to a longer life? Or will he decide that the pleasures of a short and happy life matter more to him than living to a ripe old age?

Eat To Live Forever With Giles Coren, 1x60, is produced by the BBC and the Executive producers are Lisa Ausden and James Hayes. The Producer is Daniel Child.

Britain’s Favourite Foods: Are They Good For You?

This one-hour programme, Britain’s Favourite Foods: Are They Good For You? will reveal what Britain really puts in its shopping trolley and how these choices impact our bodies and health.

Alice has uncovered the latest stats to reveal what we’re eating and buying in Britain today. She will discover interesting science and nutritional facts about the fresh food we eat, including the health benefits within our favourite foods and what to watch out for. For example, forget pricey sports drinks, reach for our number one dairy product, milk, to help you rehydrate after exercise; two of our top five vegetables have a surprise ingredient that could make you look more attractive and cheese has a secret which could help you shed the pounds. Alice will uncover the truth behind our favourite foods and reveal which ones you should be putting in your shopping trolley.

Britain’s Favourite Foods: Are They Good For You?, 1x60, is made by the BBC and the Executive Producer is Helen Thomas.

Britain’s Favourite Meals and How To Cook Them

Britain’s Favourite Meals and How To Cook Them is a one-hour special that sets out the state of the nation through the food we love to eat. By looking closer at our favourite dishes we can show the trends rippling through Britain and how our tastes are changing, which might reveal some surprises! The show will be presented by culinary geniuses, the Hairy Bikers and Lorraine Pascale.

Across the hour, our chefs will scour the four corners of the UK as they reveal Britain’s top 10 favourite dishes and discover why people love certain recipes so much. Each chef will then offer their own different views on our loved recipes and set out to create their own fresh versions of the nation’s favourite dishes.

Britain’s Favourite Meals and How To Cook Them is made by Ricochet. The Executive Producers are Tom Edwards for the BBC and Simon Knight for Ricochet

Food And Drink

Food And Drink will feature two special episodes as part of the season – Comeback Cuisine and Try Something New.

In the Comeback Cuisine episode, Tom Kerridge is joined by fellow Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc to cook two dishes using ingredients that are disappearing into our culinary past. Raymond recreates a favourite soufflé from his childhood using semolina and heritage apples to rival Tom’s old-fashioned mutton chops with cabbage and turnip gratin: all ingredients that have fallen out of fashion. Oliver Peyton gets the inside track on a distilling revival that’s happening right under our noses, and Andy Bates has another look at rabbit - a meat once popular across the UK.

And in Try Something New, double-Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge and fellow chef Glynn Purnell are challenging each other - and the public - to create brand-new recipes from scratch. Each chef has a set of rules to work by and, whether you’re a recipe slave or someone who makes it up as you go along, by the end of this show you’ll know the secrets to cooking spectacular food from scratch. Drinks expert Joe Wadsack persuades Tom and Glynn to be open-minded and try some red wine from a surprising source - Germany. Meanwhile, Arabella Weir meets a cocktail mixologist who puts chefs to shame when it comes to experimenting with flavour.

Food And Drink is produced by BBC. The Executive Producer is Robi Dutta.

Related BBC Links

• BBC Two