If there is a more stultifyingly overdone format on telly than the food travelogue, it is the comedian-and-guest-on-holiday travelogue. Yet here we are with Big Zuu’s 12 Dishes in 12 Hours, which combines the two. But you can roll me in flaked almonds and stuff me in your carry-on luggage if it isn’t the freshest new entry in either genre for years.
Big Zuu is Zuhair Hassan, who is not a comedian as such – officially he’s a rapper and DJ – but whose guests on his previous series for Dave, Big Zuu’s Big Eats, were mostly standups. There, as Zuu cooked for his temporary companions, he was effortlessly as funny as they were without competing with them.
As he steps up to ITV1, Zuu guides a different celebrity through a different foodie destination each week, the contrived challenge being that a dozen local specialities must be consumed in as many hours. Eat the food, believes Zuu, and you will absorb a city’s soul. In the opening episode, an irresistible location – Bologna, Italy – and an overwhelmingly charming guest – the actor Will Poulter – mix to give us the sort of vicarious blast that travelogues always swing for and almost always miss.
Bologna is, of course, the home of spaghetti bolognese, so Zuu and Poulter try that first, pitching up at a tiny restaurant that could not be more intoxicatingly Italian. Looking at the wine bottles on the wall and the patron informing customers that the sauce is made with his grandmother’s secret recipe, it is impossible to imagine anything other than the most sumptuous ragu on Earth. When Zuu and Poulter do the quasi-orgasmic “ngggh!” noise to indicate that the pasta really is very nice, you do not doubt it.
The restaurateur is a gem as well, displaying an impressive gift for snappy banter in his second language as he steals some of Zuu’s ragu and says: “I’m not eating. I’m just doing quality control.” It becomes clear that finding this guy is no fluke: Zuu’s producers have also turned up two flirty sexagenarian women who craft unbeatable tortelloni; an Eritrean immigrant whose insistence on feeding Zuu, Poulter and their crew with her fingers is utterly adorable; and a calm master of parmigiano reggiano, who muses that the only ingredients he uses are “milk, salt and time”. Bologna seems to have not just the best food in Italy but also a lavish supply of charismatic eccentrics who can showcase it on British light-factual TV.
The stars, however, are still Zuu and Poulter. Whether they are semi-ironically staring down a circling camera in an exquisite piazza, rapping about ice-cream in the back of a Fiat or breaking into a high-pitched version of the Champions League anthem, they have golden buddy-movie chemistry. It is as if they have been friends for decades, which seems unlikely, or been afforded weeks of rehearsal time, which is out of the question.
When standup comics go mini-breaking with Richard Ayoade or cycling with David O’Doherty, you can feel the tension that comes with them knowing their appearance is part of their job, another step up the ladder. Non-comedians who are just funny people, meanwhile, bring an easier affability to this sort of improvised capering, and good actors find it easy to play a boosted version of their already personable selves. Poulter has all that in excess, and has nothing to gain here but a good time.
If the dish to be tasted has pork in it – such as the “bougie Lunchable” that is parmesan wrapped in mortadella – Zuu has to let his guest take over, since he’s not “Hal-lowed” to eat it. But he is in any case a generous host, happy to set a comic riff going and let Poulter run with it. Sometimes the actor doesn’t need any help, as when he observes that certosino, Bologna’s answer to Christmas cake, sounds like “a box-to-box midfielder”. Zuu tees him up to say it in a commentator’s voice: “CERTOSONI!!!” exclaims Poulter, channelling Brian Moore, with his mangling of the name as a non-Italian speaker only making the joke better.
Just as any viewers frenziedly booking gastronomic weekends in Bologna as the end credits roll – it looks worth it just for the surprising uses of balsamic vinegar – will struggle to eat quite as much as Zuu and Poulter, Big Zuu will have to work hard to make the rest of this series as delightful with guests who are not Poulter. But he has the skills to give it a go. If he can make 12 Dishes in 12 Hours this enjoyable every week, the dreaded celebrity/foodie travelogue has found a saviour.
• Big Zuu’s 12 Dishes in 12 Hours is on ITV1 and ITVX.
