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The Review Geek
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Review Geek
Careme – Season 1 Episode 3 Recap & Review
A Recipe for a Disaster Episode 3 of Careme begins with the orphan being released from custody. He immediately heads back to see Careme, who patches up the wounds on his hands. Apparently this guy kept quiet and remained loyal to the cause, which is perhaps just as well given Fouche is starting to tighten the leash! There's disorder in the streets and things soon turn violent when Catherine and Henriette's carriage is attacked by angry bystanders. This appears to be the work of Germaine after the letter circling the party last episode. They smash the glass and look set to hurt them, until the police show up on horses and break things up. Catherine is furious, especially when she returns to Talleyrand. She believes it's the work of De Stael, playing 'armchair revolutionist'. Just to make matters worse, the carriage has been painted with the words 'Death to Bonaparte' too. Talleyrand visits Careme and explains that Germaine's pamphlets have caused everything to begin cracking at the seams, and Talleyrand wants to try and patch things up before it turns ugly. This stems from using Careme as a spy to gather the pamphlets over at her apartment. At the Hotel de Salm, Careme shows up to see Germaine. He shows off the menu he's been working on but also uses this opportunity to briefly scout the place too, although that's quite difficult given a couple of men are here already. However, he promises Germaine a big surprise for the starter. The dinner looks set to go ahead and as Germaine shows at Talleyrand's place, there are light hostilities between her and Catherine. The pair grin through the games and keep up appearances, all whilst Careme heads into Germaine's room to find the pamphlets. What Careme finds instead though is one big scandal. Charlotte has been having an affair with Charles, Talleyrand's son, and it turns out she's pregnant. Their child will be heir if Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine don't have kids. This is a huge scandal and it's just what Careme needs to stir the pot. As he sneaks out the room, Charles winds up seeing him but doesn't say anything. At least not initially anyway. He does confront Careme in the stairwell later on, but they agree to keep each other's secrets… for now. Back in the kitchen, a guy called Grimod Reyniere arrives, grilling Careme and messing with the kitchen. Careme is not particularly happy as he waltzes about and tries the food, but it turns out Reyniere is actually the biggest food critic in France, so his opinion is not one to take lightly. Careme knows that this is serious and works on his dishes with renewed focus, showing the others how he intends to present this dish to the guests. While this is going on, Talleyrand pleads with Germaine to show off the original pamphlet, which he wants to destroy, otherwise if Fouche finds it first, she'll be killed for defying Bonaparte. The dishes are presented, just as Fouche shows up at the party with his soldiers, and the food critic (among many others) are impressed by Careme's talents. Well, for a bit anyway. He also has a lot of backhanded insults toward the young chef, including throwing shade at his father. Now, Fouche is intending to find these pamphlets, which he believes is hidden behind the barrels in the wine cellar, which happen to show off a secret entrance to Germaine's study, which includes a printing press. Now, earlier on Careme actually snuck in here and removed the pamphlets, replacing them with alternate versions that praise Napoleon. This also explains why Careme was late announcing the food to the party just moments before. Anyway, Fouche uncovers the pamphlets and is left with egg on his face when he finds out they're not genuine. However, the inspector checks the printing press and realizes the letters are identical and as a result, Germaine is arrested. Talleyrand encourages her to flee, for the sake of France's future, prompting Fouche to turn his attention over to Bailly. He tries to persuade Careme's father to play ball, and shows off his son's handwriting. Fouche has sussed out who Careme is and admits that the guy is in very murky waters right now. The only way out is to present proof to Fouche of Talleyrand's connection to the attack, and then Bailly can go free and return to his son. However, Fouche is also aware of where Germaine is too and has spies working for him. Spies which include Henriette. The Episode Review Alas, the plot thickens! With Henriette working on the side of Fouche, and Germaine having gone on the run, we now see a lot more of Fouche's ruthlessness and competence in his job. He's incredibly adept and has a great eye too. The printing press segment was particularly ingenious, working well to showcase exactly how tough he's going to be to beat here. Careme is caught in the middle but the scandal involving Charlotte and Charles could yet become a vital bargaining chip going forward, we'll have to wait and see. For now though, Careme has done well to keep things interesting, although the pacing is a tad slow at parts. While the actual history of this time period has clearly been shaped and changed to fit with the theme of the show, it's still an enjoyable watch, all things considered. Previous Episode Next Episode Expect A Full Season Write-Up When This Season Concludes!
Telegraph
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Martha Kearney: ‘Meg Ryan was the worst interviewee I've ever had'
Martha Kearney, 67, was born in Dublin and joined the BBC in 1990. She presented Radio 4's The World At One programme for 11 years and was one of the main Today programme presenters for eight and a half years before stepping down last summer. She currently presents This Natural Life on the same station and lives in Suffolk with her husband, the documentary maker Chris Shaw. Best childhood memory? When I was living in Ditchling in Sussex at the age of about 11, I was asked to play Alice in a village production of Alice Through the Looking Glass. It was a real little girl's dream. I had a little cape with a muffler and a little velvet cap. It turns out the production I was in became a cult classic. The music in it, which was quite psychedelic, was recorded and it was, much later, released as an album. I got a copy and so I now have a recording where you can hear my childhood voice. Best day of your life? It was in the best year of my life – 1989. My partner (now husband) Chris and I both packed in our jobs and went travelling. The first thing we did was go trekking in the foothills of the Himalayas in Kashmir. The altitude made sleeping tough but I remember one day where we walked across a glacier and emerged into a valley which was completely covered in purple flowers. We had a picnic and I recall lying in the grass and looking at the snowy peaks around us. It was just an incredible moment – partly because it was so difficult to get there. We felt we'd really earned our view. Best friend you ever had? I can only narrow this down to my best friend at the BBC – but that would definitely be Kirsty Wark. We met in the early 1990s when I first came to Newsnight. She was presenting at that time and she was, and is, just huge fun. She's also been such a supportive colleague. She took the time to show me around the studio, taught me how to look into the right camera and all that. She was very patient and sisterly to me. Over the years we've been on lots of holidays together. I threw a surprise birthday for her the other week where myself and lots of her friends all jumped out from behind the sofa. The decibel levels were very high that night. Best live radio or TV debate? I was presenting Woman's Hour and had both Germaine Greer and Julie Burchill on at the same time. The most almighty row broke out and Julie really attacked Germaine's book which I think was about plastic surgery. It was one of those moments where I just stood back and let the pair of them have their say. We ditched the rest of the programme so we didn't have to stop them. It was just amazing live radio where I had no idea what was going to happen next. I think Germaine was taken aback as she's such a great polemicist, but Julie just tore into her. Best decision? Buying our cottage in Suffolk. My parents found it and we're there most of the time now. We were given a beehive as a wedding present so that got me started as a beekeeper too. Moving to Suffolk really made me connect properly with the natural world. I saw my first peacock butterfly of the year today so it's a place where you really do feel the different seasons. Best place in the world? I really like exploring ancient ruins. I studied Latin and Greek at university and that love of those cultures have stayed with me all my life. The ones I really like are overgrown and feel a long way from anywhere. Termessos is one of the best preserved ancient sites in Turkey, with temples and huge blocks of stone. You feel like you're coming across things for the very first time when you're there. There are brambles and wild flowers everywhere and there's something about those tumbled, ancient blocks which is very romantic. Worst day of your life? The day of the death of my brother-in-law Alastair two years ago. He had Down's syndrome and he was an incredibly important part of my life. He always used to say that I was like both a mother and a sister to him. He got premature dementia and wasn't allowed to see us for a long time during Covid. It was very tough. He got very ill indeed and Chris and I were both with him when he died in hospital. He was only 60. I think about him all the time but do feel very blessed that I was able to be with him at the end. Worst thing you've ever eaten? I was in hospital having my wisdom teeth taken out. I couldn't wait for mealtime and I thought I'd been given a pastry in custard. It turned out it was a sausage roll which they'd put custard on by accident, instead of gravy. I was so hungry but I just couldn't eat that. Worst person you've ever shared a studio with? Meg Ryan was surprising. I'd always loved her films and I was expecting to meet this happy, funny, bubbly blonde, like her on-screen persona. But she was completely different. I almost didn't recognise her. She seemed so unhappy and angry and she clearly really didn't want to be interviewed. I was quite intimidated by her, and I wasn't even asking particularly probing questions. She was so tetchy and difficult. I felt a lot better when I saw her on Parkinson a week later and he had a very tough time with her as well. I thought, if Parky's having trouble then my bad interview with Meg can't all have been my fault. Worst mistake you've ever made? In 1979 I had this huge, early crisis of confidence. When I was a student I wrote to Woman's Hour to see if I could do some work experience for them. They liked an idea of mine about a woman's cult that had started up in Oxford with priestesses. I went off, recorded the piece, edited it then had a complete meltdown of confidence, decided it wasn't good enough and never sent the piece in. I did end up presenting Woman's Hour, but that was about 20 years later. I always think I could have saved myself a few years if I'd had the confidence. The imposter syndrome young women go through is a very real thing and it can be very debilitating. Worst book you've ever read? Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson was a book I had to read at school. I loved Treasure Island but this one was just so tedious. We were reading it aloud around the class so it just took forever to get through it. I did know a student at Oxford who hated one of his textbooks so much that he got an air rifle and shot holes in it! I've never gone that far. Worst place you've ever visited? The women's prison in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2002. What was really shocking was how incredibly overcrowded it was and how young the prisoners were. They were girls really, not women, and some were with their babies, lying on the floor. They'd been locked up for transgressing the religious laws of the Taliban, like being found in a car with a man who wasn't a member of their family. I hope those girls were let out of prison. But then I think about what's happening now and I feel so sorry for the women whose hopes were raised and have now been taken away, again. All time worst? Being on a plane surrounded by parents who let their children watch Peppa Pig or whatever on their iPads without headphones, all at the same time. I do occasionally ask people if they have any headphones. I also know people who will put on their own music very loudly, just to shock them. It's just this cacophony of different sounds all around you that I don't like.
Times
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Catherine Deneuve's former château near Paris is now an elegant hotel
The many famous men linked to the veteran actress Catherine Deneuve, on screen and off, could dominate this column. Yet the Gallic superstar's most enduring entanglement was arguably with her gardener Gérard Germaine, the slight, bucket-hatted outdoorsman charged with maintaining Primard, her lush Eure river estate an hour west of Paris near the village of Guainville. For Deneuve's last decade as chatelaine of the 17th-century château, Germaine tended the roses, cleared the wooded paths and pruned the cherry orchard designed by the Belgian landscape 'starchitect' Jacques Wirtz — as well as providing green-fingered wisdom and (platonic) love. So taken was she by the dedication of Germaine and his labourers, when she became the first woman to win the prestigious Lumière film award nearly a decade ago she dedicated the prize to 'the farmers of France'. By that time Deneuve had already put Primard on the market to move further into the countryside of her beloved farmers. But Germaine stayed on as head gardener for the new owner, Fontenille, a hotelier with a portfolio of 11 properties with heritage character, the most breathlessly praised being the seaside Bords de Mer in Marseilles. His brief now is to establish formality and symmetry, to frame the main house as the star of the show. Deneuve's Primard, he says, was more of a jardin sauvage — wilder, more romantic, 'more English'. Channelling Germaine's passion for the Eure river landscape, Fontenille's owners Guillaume Foucher and Frédéric Biousse have coaxed the property into the platonic ideal of a destination hotel. It's a place for Parisians who want to escape but remain well within the orbit of beau-monde Paris, a rustic retreat where you can still pack your gladrags. Foucher is the eye behind the interior scheme, done up with the designer Beryl Le Lasseur in washed blues and shades of verdigris to match the surroundings. To the freshly sandblasted honeyed-stone château he's brought in some of the manor-house touchstones we've come to know and love — the plush slipper chairs, serpentine sofas and gilt-framed portraits of nobody's ancestors in particular — and treated us with hand-forged pendant lights hanging down the void of a three-storey staircase, and an intimate foyer with dried flowers raining down from the ceiling like stalactites. • An insider's guide to the best neighbourhoods in Paris A suite of reception areas, connected railway-style, is structurally unchanged from Deneuve's tenure. They include an antique-mirrored bar and a boudoir outfitted in tasselled trim and floral wallpaper like a beautiful gown, all with the same parquet scuffed from decades of entertaining. Eleven sets of French doors, front and back, open to deep lawns. During my afternoon goûter of apple tart and champagne I try to capture a heron perched on the river before it flaps off over a shroud of pines. 'No photos, please!' Upstairs are guest rooms on three levels. Where Deneuve once kept a sauna, cinema, make-up room and eight bedrooms — my guide mentions after-parties and after-after-parties — there are now 14 guest rooms. Deneuve's own bedroom is now the minty-green first-floor signature suite, set up during my tour with two cots and a dog bed, with windows on three sides overlooking Germaine's grounds. In the mansard roof, where Deneuve stored 570 articles of clothing designed by her friend Yves Saint Laurent, are two grand deluxe junior suites with original wood rafters and private lifts. As for my room, it's in a rehabilitated farm building on the house's northern flank, where a main-floor lounge is outfitted in the same tactile monochrome as the house cat Duchesse, who can normally be found on the large ottoman. The category is the second-tier deluxe, large enough for a small lobby with a bleached-wood writing desk and coffee bar. The king bed faces two picture windows and assorted seating to serve as catch-alls. Like any great hotel bathroom, this one, with its heated hex-tile floor in hunter green, makes me reconsider my decorating decisions back home. Its walk-in shower could power-wash a large mammal. The modern roll-top tub, set in a window to capture the morning light, seems small until I drop myself in and realise the scale of the room has played tricks on my eyes. Pear-scented botanical toiletries by Susanne Kaufmann are fragrant placeholders until Fontenille launches its signature scent, a 'family-home vibe' of vetiver, cedar and white musk. A certain type of guest would balk at staying in the secondary residence, however 'curated' with botanical prints and designer lighting. But I enjoy toing and froing, even in the drizzle, with a golf umbrella from the abundant stash. In the intense dark after dinner, the main house seems 'the embodiment of the evening light — its expanse, its silence', a phrase used by director André Téchiné to describe Deneuve herself. I wear my robe and slippers on the gravel path to the spa next door, rebuilt in weathered timber on the site of the old woodshed with a small gym on the floor above. An hour in the hot tub and barrel sauna and I am positively floating back, drizzle be damned. Meals are a more complex proposition. Out here on the wild border between the sister regions Île-de-France and Normandy, the assumption is that guests will stay put for them, so one has choices to make. I spend several glorious hours at the Table d'Hôte, Deneuve's original kitchen, where little has changed but for the arrival of stainless steel appliances behind the bar. At a long antique harvest table I have a casual welcome lunch and dinner à quatre featuring heated spits of raclette cheese with sides of local beef charcuterie and boiled potatoes — all served with fruity white wines from Fontenille's vineyard in the Luberon (from £63pp). Guests have the opportunity to book the Table d'Hôte with a dedicated server, as well as the old serre, or glasshouse, ample enough for regular flower-arranging workshops (£61) and private candlelit dinners brought in from the main kitchen under a silver cloche. Lunch at Bistro Martin, in the former orchard house, gets an outside crowd of femmes d'un certain age from Paris's western suburbs and suits on away-days. Helmed by Geraud Dupuis, a young chef trained at Michelin establishments, it benefits from the same pure provincial sun as my bathroom and familiar faces from a small staff that rotates among posts. The short menu heeds the meat-and-two-veg model, with the veg in question coming from Germaine's garden. Mashed potato comes in a café au lait bowl, which seems appropriate as it clearly contains more dairy than starch (mains from £25). • I've stayed at more than 60 hotels in Paris. These are my favourites A vestiaire divides Bistro Martin from the fine-dining restaurant Les Chemins, also under Dupuis' direction. And if you're at all concerned that the French have distanced themselves from rich sauces and foie gras, you will happily find them here, on a five or seven-course menu that includes show-offy coquilles Saint Jacques in shells the colour of a cosmopolitan. A duck breast is as delicately plated as sashimi (five-course menu £118pp). But the small, sporadic plates seem much of a muchness on holiday in the fresh air, famished from a day's walking and steeping — and, in summer, swimming in a 25m heated outdoor pool appointed with photogenic nautical-stripe loungers. I find myself wistful for the breakfast buffet. But, like I said, it's one option out of many. A guest can feel as if they're being wooed, with flowers and wine and cheese five ways, all available as paid 'experiences' in the name of self-improvement. I feel like saying, 'I'm here. You've got me.' I'm happy simply roaming the grounds, for which I'm encouraged to pull on a pair of house wellies (does Deneuve wear practical footwear in nature, I wonder). Germaine joins me on my first round and points out the magnolia trees he transplanted, the bulbous manicured bushes in place of former wheat fields, the sleeping beds of peonies. He also invites me to plant a tree on the plot where he's reforesting copses of pine and oak that were stricken by virus. • 25 of the best short breaks in France I carry on alone around the livestock pen. With the sun hovering behind, every sheep has a silver lining, and the donkey too — upon foolishly leaning in to snap a photo I am promptly zapped by the electric fence. The 100 acres aren't quite large enough to get lost in but the quiet is transporting. I end up at a deserted terrace by the river, where I assume in summer a handsome waiter will appear with a wine list. Fontenille recently purchased six hectares on the opposite bank, a former hunting ground from which they'll no longer have to worry about stray bullets. For now, Foucher and Biousse plan to leave it be, 'to hold it for the environment', Germaine says. Or perhaps next time I come there will be more mise-en-scène to crow about. This article contains affiliate links that can earn us revenueEllen Himelfarb was a guest of Domaine de Primard, which has room-only doubles from £250 ( and of Eurostar, which has return fares between London and Paris from £98 (
