‘Carême' brings ‘yes, chef' energy to 19th-century France
Indeed, non-Francophiles may need a second to orient themselves to this particular slice of history; the series caters more toward those already steeped in France's political evolution than those who need a beginner's guide. The fast-paced, handsomely shot show is set a few years after the French Revolution, where Carême's namesake Marie Antoinette and her husband, King Louis XVI, were guillotined and Napoleon Bonaparte (a little-seen Franck Molinaro) took charge as First Consul of the newly formed French Republic.
It's ostensibly a time of peace, although lingering royalists and revolutionaries often clash with Bonaparte's supporters, and everyday Parisians are worried they've traded one totalitarian regime for another.
In other words, things are tense for just about everyone, including the show's pulled-from-the-history-books political players. Fresh off butchering dissenters during the Reign of Terror, officious chief of police Joseph Fouché (Micha Lescot doing his best Javert) is quick to crush any threat of rebellion in Paris. Napoleon's wife, Joséphine (Maud Wyler), meanwhile, is focused on the kind of soft-power and glad-handing her husband detests, even as she worries this whole Republic experiment may collapse if she can't produce an heir.
Advertisement
And working from the shadows is nobleman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (Jérémie Renier), a savvy statesman who's happy to change up his stances, allies, and tactics in order to hold France together — and elevate his own position in the process. (The history books now remember 'Talleyrand' as a nickname for crafty, ever-shifting diplomacy.)
Into that political hotbed comes Carême, a culinary savant everyone wants to use as their political pawn — ostensibly because chefs have easy access to the elite, but mostly because he's too sexy to resist. Lanky, tousled, and playfully flirtatious, Voisin reads like a cross between Jeremy Allen White and Timothée Chalamet; both brashly demanding and boyishly charming.
It's a seductive central performance, and his modernized costuming only adds to the idea that Carême is the bad boy of French cooking. (While everyone else is vaguely period appropriate, he's styled like a pirate prince wearing Primark's fall coat collection.)
Introduced, uh,
experimenting
with whipped cream with his paramour Henriette (Lyna Khoudri), Carême has an ambitious desire to elevate French cooking to new heights by bringing architectural elements to his work. (Think elaborate cakes styled as Egyptian pyramids, sugar sculptures made to look like ships, and a new dish called vol-au-vent.) Though he's no Napoleon fan, he's more interested in petit fours than France's political woes.
Advertisement
But when his adoptive father/patisserie mentor Sylvain Bailly (Vincent Schmitt) is arrested by Fouché on trumped up charges, Carême reluctantly agrees to work for Talleyrand in exchange for help freeing him — taking up a role as both head chef and unofficial spy. That makes Talleyrand half mentor introducing Carême to high society and half crime boss demanding his protégé do his bidding.
While the real-life Carême really did work for Talleyrand on important diplomatic meals, the series heightens that idea into a full-on espionage thriller. Though 'Carême'
is based on a biography by British writer-actor Ian Kelly, who serves as co-creator along with Italian writer Davide Serino, the show plays pretty fast and loose with history. It frequently embraces a '
It's a bit of a goofy premise that also gives the show a welcome episodic structure. Each week features a new high-stakes meal in which Carême must pull off some kind of mission for Talleyrand. In one episode, he delivers a booze-soaked buffet as part of an entrapment scheme. In another, he uses the cover of a luncheon to search for a hidden piece of evidence. At one point, he's shipped off to Warsaw to cook a meal so good it will convince Louis's exiled brother to renounce the throne. When food fails, Carême often turns to sex to get what he needs instead. (Though he doesn't sleep with the exiled king, he does suggest it.) The tone of it all sits somewhere between knowingly ridiculous and emotionally committed.
Advertisement
"Carême" combines food and political intrigue.
Apple TV+
Of course, given that the real Carême is most famous for his massive impact on French cooking, it's a little weird that the show foregrounds the spy stuff so much. When it comes to the food, the series relies more on montage than exposition to explore what made Carême's cooking so influential — simple but innovative ingredients, elaborately detailed presentations, and a focus on streamlining the
process
of working in a kitchen. (Get ready for perhaps the first 'yes chef' in culinary history.)
The scenes where Carême and his kitchen staff pull together a meal or invent a new dish are exhilarating in their own right. And one of the show's most electric relationships is between Carême and his talented sous-chef Agathe (Alice Da Luz), which plays like an even more sexually charged riff on the dynamic between
Still, though it's odd that there are more double crosses than double creams in a show about a famed pastry chef, the French history riffs are at least zippily delivered. The series is also gorgeous to look at, with great production design for its bustling kitchens and opulent banquets. And Carême's complicated relationship with Talleyrand is a strong central anchor, particularly as the season goes on. (This is clearly a show that's gunning for a second season.)
While 'Carême' never reaches the refinement of fine dining, it delivers a historical smorgasbord with a little something for every palate.
Advertisement
CARÊME
Starring Benjamin Voisin, Jérémie Renier, Micha Lescot, Alice Da Luz. On Apple TV+
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
38 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Israel vows to stop aid boat with Greta Thunberg and other activists on board from reaching Gaza
Israel vowed on Sunday to stop an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and other activists on board from reaching Gaza. As of Sunday evening, the UK-flagged civilian vessel was north of Egypt in the Mediterranean Sea, slowly approaching the coast of Gaza. The 'Madleen' is part of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, an organization that has campaigned against Israel's blockade of Gaza and tried to break the siege by boat. 'We know that it's a very risky mission and we know that previous experiences with flotillas like this have resulted in attacks, violence and even cases of death,' Thunberg told CNN on Saturday. 'But of course none of those risks are even remotely as high as the risk that Palestinians are facing everyday just by trying to survive.' Defense Minister Israel Katz reiterated that the Madleen, operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, would not make it to the besieged enclave. 'I have instructed the IDF to ensure that the 'Madleen' flotilla does not reach Gaza,' said Katz in a statement, referring to the name of the ship. Katz warned the ship that 'you'd better turn back – because you will not reach Gaza.' Thunberg and the Madleen expect to reach Gaza within the next day, organizer Yasemin Acar told CNN on Saturday. 'We are still on our way to Gaza. There's no turning back, and we're hoping to make it into Gaza within two days,' Acar said. The coalition campaigns to end Israel's blockade of Gaza and has tried to reach the enclave several times in the past After an 11-week blockade that prevented any humanitarian aid from entering Gaza, Israel has begun allowing a trickle of aid in once again. But it is only a fraction of the aid that entered the enclave before the war, with humanitarian organizations warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis and the growing risk of widespread famine. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, said on social media that the flotilla carries more than food. 'It is not only the aid, it is the HUMANITY THEY CARRY. For all of us,' she said. The crew, which has publicized the location of the ship with an online tracker, began preparing for the possibility of interception by the Israeli military. Among those joining the crew are Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, and 'Game of Thrones' actor Liam Cunningham. 'From both a legal and moral standpoint, Israel has no right to intercept this vessel,' the group said in a statement. 'The people of Gaza, under siege, starving, and facing the threat of annihilation, have the legal right to decide who enters their territories.' Last month, another vessel from the Freedom Flotilla Coalition came under what its organizers said was an Israeli drone attack off the coast of Malta in international waters. The group did not provide evidence that the drone was Israeli, while the Israeli military has declined to comment on the alleged attack. The ship, the 'Conscience,' was heading to Malta, where a large contingent of activists were due to board before it departed for Gaza, more than 1,000 miles away, but had not made it into port, the group said. The coalition told CNN that Thunberg was among those who were expected to board the vessel in Malta.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Marcel Ophuls, maker of The Sorrow and the Pity, which examined French collaboration with the Nazis
Marcel Ophuls, who has died aged 97, was a German-born documentary-maker who fled his homeland in the 1930s and spent much of his career interrogating the various legacies of the Second World War; his international breakthrough, the landmark The Sorrow and the Pity (Le Chagrin et la Pitié, 1969), revealed the extent to which his adopted France had collaborated with the Nazis. The son of the German-Jewish director Max Ophuls – known for such elaborate melodramas as La Ronde (1950) – Marcel began his career in film drama but achieved greater traction with complex, rigorous, meticulously edited non-fiction work. In documentaries such as The Memory of Justice (1976) and Hôtel Terminus (1988), the filmmaker set multiple testimonies side by side, sometimes corroborating, often contradicting, always inviting the spectator to shake any passivity and judge for themselves. In The Sorrow and the Pity, Ophuls spent four and a half hours of screen time – and many more hours of shooting – staking out the city of Clermont-Ferrand 'to analyse four years of collective destiny'. Patiently hearing from residents of all walks of life, the film picked insistently away at the Gaullist myth of a country united against an occupier, instead revealing two Frances at odds with one another – one resisting, the other collaborating. In France, Sorrow was denounced by conservative politicians as 'a prosecutorial film' and initially rejected for both theatrical and television distribution. After much legal wrangling, it finally opened in 1971, earning an Oscar nomination the following year, but it did not air on French television until 1981; a station director said the film had 'destroyed myths the French people still needed'. Ophuls subsequently made films on Vietnam (The Harvest of My Lai, 1970) and the Irish Troubles (A Sense of Loss, 1972), though the latter was rejected by the BBC. His personal favourite, The Memory of Justice, revisited the Nuremberg trials in the context of more recent conflicts in Algeria and Vietnam, though the project was again beset by lengthy and expensive legal challenges; Ophuls filed for bankruptcy shortly thereafter and spent a decade on the lecture circuit. He made a triumphant return, however, with the Oscar-winning Hôtel Terminus, on the life of the Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie. As free-roaming as its subject, unearthing material both disturbing and absurd, the film ends in one of documentary cinema's most extraordinary sequences, as Ophuls witnesses a chance encounter between a woman who as a child had seen her father carted away by the Gestapo and an elderly neighbour who had turned a blind eye to the same events. Though Hôtel Terminus sparked violent arguments at Cannes, the critic Roger Ebert admired its tenacity, calling it 'the film of a man who continues the conversation after others would like to move on to more polite subjects'. Yet as a characteristically combative Ophuls countered in 2004: 'I'm not obsessed. I just happen to think that the Holocaust was the worst thing that happened in the 20th century. Think I'm wrong?' He was born Hans Marcel Oppenheimer in Frankfurt on November 1 1927, the son of Max Oppenheimer and his actress wife Hildegard Wall. The family fled Germany for France in 1933, taking French citizenship in 1938, whereupon Max dropped the umlaut from his stage name, Ophüls; after the occupation they fled anew to Los Angeles, where Max began an unhappy spell as a studio filmmaker and Marcel attended Hollywood High and Occidental College. Marcel Ophuls completed military service in Japan before studying at UC Berkeley, taking US citizenship in 1950. Upon graduation he moved to Paris, briefly studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, before dropping out and working as an assistant director (initially under the pseudonym Marcel Wall, to dodge nepotism accusations) on John Huston's Moulin Rouge (1952) and his father's sweeping Lola Montès (1955). He made his directorial debut with a German television adaptation of John Mortimer's The Dock Brief (Das Pflichtmandat, 1958), before being tapped by François Truffaut to contribute to the portmanteau film Love at Twenty (L'amour à vingt ans, 1962). By now he was part of the New Wave set: Jeanne Moreau funded his detective comedy Banana Skin (Peau de Banane, 1963), but his fiction career came to a halt after the flop thriller Place Your Bets, Ladies (Faites vos jeux, mesdames, 1965). Ophuls moved into documentary, taking a job with the French broadcaster ORTF, where he railed against the prevailing state censorship; he was eventually fired in May 1968 after making a film deemed sympathetic to the student rioters, though by then he was well into post-production on The Sorrow and the Pity. After Hôtel Terminus, Ophuls suffered mixed fortunes. November Days (1990), on the subject of German reunification, played as part of the BBC's Inside Story strand, but The Troubles We've Seen (Veillées d'armes, 1994), on wartime journalism and the Bosnian conflict, failed to reach an audience, despite a César nomination in France. He worked more sparingly in the new millennium, completing Max par Marcel (2009), on his father's legacy, and the career overview Ain't Misbehavin' (Un voyageur, 2013), his final completed film; a later project on anti-Semitism and the Middle East, Des vérités désagréables (Unpleasant Truths), ran into financial and legal troubles and remained unfinished at the time of his death. During a visit to Israel in 2007, Ophuls attempted to define his life's work: 'I'm not a preacher, a judge or an adviser. I'm just a filmmaker trying now and then to make sense of crises... Life made me, unwillingly, an expert on 20th-century crises. I would've preferred to direct musicals.' He is survived by his wife Regine, née Ackermann, and three daughters. Marcel Ophuls, born November 1 1927, died May 24 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Supporting free science is a 'political and ethical' duty, Macron says
STORY: :: French President Emmanuel Macron makes a firm stand against skepticism towards climate science :: Monaco :: June 8, 2025 'For several years now, we've been hearing that, 'basically, climate change, the threat to biodiversity, the problem of the oceans, all of that is a matter of opinion. In fact, we could do without it. Besides, we're not entirely sure'. And I'm even noticing that some people are cutting funding to continue research in this area. I'm going to tell you, 'no', we don't have the right to do that because it's not an opinion, it's scientifically established.' // "And so it is a political, ethical, and scientific duty that we continue to fund free, open, and cooperative science, to continue to understand, research, and base our decisions on this science." Monaco hosted the two-day Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF), a prelude to the week-long U.N. Ocean Conference in nearby Nice, which starts on Monday (June 9). The BEFF sought to outline financial advantages in protecting the oceans. Macron spoke to an audience that included Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves and Britain's Prince William. He underlined efforts to promote sustainable fishing, decarbonized maritime transport, and green tourism. This week's U.N. conference aims to get more countries to ratify a treaty on protecting ocean biodiversity which currently lacks sufficient signatories to come into force.
