Tonight marks the moment that certain people on the forums have been waiting for for quite some time (I’m not going to name names, but they know who we they are) as The Supersizers Go… returns for a brand new series. Except this time it’s called The Supersizers Eat…, which isn’t really much of an improvement as titles go, but as long as the central conceit of the programme (Giles Coren and Sue Perkins eating an antiquated diet and having as much of a laugh as possible in the process) remains the same, surely we’ve got nothing to worry about.
And hurrah, it looks like that’s the case: indeed, since everyone enjoyed the 1970s episode so much last year, we’ve got not one but three 20th Century episodes lined up for the second run, including tonight’s opener which focuses on the ’80s, hence the picture of Giles and Sue larking about as Adam Ant and Madonna. There will, I’m sure, be the occasional quibble about whether a certain foodstuff genuinely belonged to the era being portrayed, but in all fairness, the series has never really pretended to be a stuffy documentary, so it’s best to take most things you learnt from what those in the trade call “fact-ent” with a pinch of salt anyway.
Also ahead are episodes set in ancient Rome (known on the forums as “the episode in which certain people are hoping to see Giles in a toga”), the French revolution and medieval England, where we can all murmur a collective “urgh” at the sight of the sort of things our forefathers used to chow down on at mealtimes, as though any of them are really any more gastronomically offensive than a PopTart or a Pot Noodle. As this looks like being the last series (Giles and Sue have hinted that they’re running out of different historical varieties of offal to sample), best enjoy it while you can.
