Blood, Sweat and Takeaways

[Bruno]

Did anyone catch this last week or tonight?

Really interesting show about where our fast food comes from - unsurprisingly shocking conditions but also just as bad showing the attitudes of the Brits involved.

Also good for showing a mental Nigerian bodybuilder being thrown off the show for smacking a lad through a window. Highly recommended.

It's an excellent idea to send young Brits off to work in the developing-world hellholes where their food comes from, which is what happens in Blood, Sweat and Takeaways (BBC3). I'm not thinking about the kids themselves; I don't know, or care very much, what they get out of it. I'm thinking about me, the viewer at home, and very entertaining it is, too.

But what must it be like for the locals - in this first one, the people of Sulawesi? One Monday morning, you turn up at the tuna-processing factory where you work long hours for almost nothing, and find you're being joined by a film crew and six young English people playing Let's Pretend We're Poor Indonesians. Well, they say they're English, but the English they speak is nothing like the English you learned in school. They say "Oh my God" or "I'm telling you" between every other word; "literally" everything is "epic"; and everything ends with "do you know what I mean?"

They behave strangely, too. They faint, and retch violently on encountering an Indonesian toilet for the first time. The girls wear almost nothing, are very emotional and cry a lot. The boys fight - especially Olu, who throws Manos through a piece of plate glass at a factory on day one and is immediately sent home to Tottenham. End of, as they say.

And they're totally crap at the work: can't loin, can't skin, can't do nothing. "I worked my arse off for these fecking fish," says Jess, but it's not good enough and she's demoted to gutting. The boys, meanwhile, are out on a boat (they've been banned from the factory for being too violent), and are proving more rubbish still at fishing. Even when they're in the middle of the biggest shoal of tuna the world has ever seen - and oh my God it is literally raining tuna, epically, all around them - it's still not happening for Manos and Josh, big time, d'know what I mean?

Suddenly, towards the end of the week, they all undergo miraculous epiphanies: they go from Veruca Bloody Salts to Mother Flippin' Teresas. They realise that they're spoilt westerners, haven't been responsible about food, haven't even thought about it or where it comes from. From now on, it's going to be different, and they're going to pay double in Tesco for a can of tuna. More tears and hugs. And hey, Sulawesi may look different on the outside, and the toilets may pong a bit, but at the end of the day, we're all the same underneath, human bein's, innit?

Actually, it must be fun for the Sulawesians, too. If you're doing the same thing hour after hour, and that thing is gutting fish, it must brighten up the day to have these extraordinary people in. And, at the end, the young visitors even use the money they've earned to buy chocolate and biscuits for their host families. The money would have been nicer, but it's better than nothing - maybe they can even forgive them for disrespecting their toilets.

Edit - episode 1 for you - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ways_Tuna/

[Ebi]

Did anyone catch this last week or tonight?

Really interesting show about where our fast food comes from - unsurprisingly shocking conditions but also just as bad showing the attitudes of the Brits involved.

Also good for showing a mental Nigerian bodybuilder being thrown off the show for smacking a lad through a window. Highly recommended.

It's an excellent idea to send young Brits off to work in the developing-world hellholes where their food comes from, which is what happens in Blood, Sweat and Takeaways (BBC3). I'm not thinking about the kids themselves; I don't know, or care very much, what they get out of it. I'm thinking about me, the viewer at home, and very entertaining it is, too.

But what must it be like for the locals - in this first one, the people of Sulawesi? One Monday morning, you turn up at the tuna-processing factory where you work long hours for almost nothing, and find you're being joined by a film crew and six young English people playing Let's Pretend We're Poor Indonesians. Well, they say they're English, but the English they speak is nothing like the English you learned in school. They say "Oh my God" or "I'm telling you" between every other word; "literally" everything is "epic"; and everything ends with "do you know what I mean?"

They behave strangely, too. They faint, and retch violently on encountering an Indonesian toilet for the first time. The girls wear almost nothing, are very emotional and cry a lot. The boys fight - especially Olu, who throws Manos through a piece of plate glass at a factory on day one and is immediately sent home to Tottenham. End of, as they say.

And they're totally crap at the work: can't loin, can't skin, can't do nothing. "I worked my arse off for these fecking fish," says Jess, but it's not good enough and she's demoted to gutting. The boys, meanwhile, are out on a boat (they've been banned from the factory for being too violent), and are proving more rubbish still at fishing. Even when they're in the middle of the biggest shoal of tuna the world has ever seen - and oh my God it is literally raining tuna, epically, all around them - it's still not happening for Manos and Josh, big time, d'know what I mean?

Suddenly, towards the end of the week, they all undergo miraculous epiphanies: they go from Veruca Bloody Salts to Mother Flippin' Teresas. They realise that they're spoilt westerners, haven't been responsible about food, haven't even thought about it or where it comes from. From now on, it's going to be different, and they're going to pay double in Tesco for a can of tuna. More tears and hugs. And hey, Sulawesi may look different on the outside, and the toilets may pong a bit, but at the end of the day, we're all the same underneath, human bein's, innit?

Actually, it must be fun for the Sulawesians, too. If you're doing the same thing hour after hour, and that thing is gutting fish, it must brighten up the day to have these extraordinary people in. And, at the end, the young visitors even use the money they've earned to buy chocolate and biscuits for their host families. The money would have been nicer, but it's better than nothing - maybe they can even forgive them for disrespecting their toilets.

Edit - episode 1 for you - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... ways_Tuna/

Haha you see that big black guy throw the small asian one into the window. One word and one word only.



WHEY!