Shank's Apprentice
Reviewed by Conor O'Neill via 
on 07 Sep 2008
item website
Home movie level production quality. Awful narration. BBC NI made an interesting story unwatchable.
A young 18 year old chef from Shu restaurant wins the Robbie Millar scholarship and the programme follows him around as he learns in various places, the first being a Valrohna Chocolate academy in France.
It was simply impossible to follow what was going on for the first 15 minutes. The camerawork was appalling, there was no clear explanation of who was doing what and why. When I finally figured out that the programme was not about the competition but the winner, then things started making sense.
Unfortunately the narrator should stick to cooking. At one point he said "I could go on for hours". It felt like he had. Some detailed footage of the young fella actually cooking might have helped!
I seriously doubt if I'll watch the remaining episodes.
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Comments
Conor O'Neill at 08:00 - 22 Sep, 2008 said:
I take a lot of this back. It looks like the biggest problem with the first episode was the narrator/mentor. The following two episodes were far better.His week in a vineyard showed a very old head on young shoulders and he appeared to learn a huge amount.
But some immaturity came to the fore last week with him going on the batter and turning up late for work to Richard Corrigan's Lindsay House. Definitely the best episode so far and finally some sense of what a professional kitchen is like.
That amount of talent and focus at 18 tells me this guy is going very far indeed.