I could watch Sarah Lancashire and Isabella Rossellini argue about the propriety of fish-shaped pastry for much longer than an hour, but apparently Julia has other characters and would like us to spend some time with them. Lancashire’s performance as the chef and author Julia Child is one of this arch, twinkly show’s main draws, but by the time we rejoin her in season two, her TV show The French Chef has triumphed over the odds, making her a star, so now the drama must find other sources of tension. Franco-American disagreements about what constitutes a cassoulet seem as good a place to start as any.
Julia is a rich and highly stylised show, which lingers as lovingly on its dialogue as it does on food. It begins its second outing with a lengthy period of separation for the bulk of the cast, dividing its time between France, where Julia and Paul (David Hyde Pierce, a perfect match for Lancashire) have escaped the madness of fame, and Boston, where the 1960s explosion in popular culture is picked over and mined for drama, from the sexism of the TV world to the power dynamics of book publishing, via several diversions to the anti-Vietnam war movement.
France offers the more sumptuous scenes, and initially, Julia is best when it lingers there. Julia is researching her next book with teacher and friend Simone “Simca” Beck (Rossellini). “It is good to have industrious wives,” notes Simca’s husband, Jean, to Paul, as they sip drinks on deckchairs in the garden. But Julia is cooking under the weight of expectation for perhaps the first time in her life. The network WGBH would like a second season of The French Chef, and her editors Blanche and Judith would like a second cookbook. Julia is reluctant to return to the US to face the music, so Judith and eventually Avis (Bebe Neuwirth) are sent over to hurry things along.
A little hurrying along is surely necessary. The pace, to start with, is gentle, and as viewers, we are Paul and Jean, lounging in the garden, waiting for the main course to be served up. It leaves the impression that it is spreading itself thinly, particularly in Boston. Director Russ (Fran Kranz) is now trying to make it in the world of documentaries. Network bossHunter (Robert Joy), having produced a hit, finds himself under extra pressure, both to manage his hit effectively and to produce even more of them.
But its main concerns are the women. Producer Alice (Brittany Bradford) is having to do her own job, despite not knowing when her French Chef will return, as well as helping the men with their roles, while taking the blame for Hunter’s terrible ideas and being denied access to the big decisions. Russ is replaced by a female director, Elaine (Rachel Bloom), who has fled the more successful CBS and must fend off the unwelcome advances of her colleagues. Meanwhile Judith must pick up the slack for the ailing Blanche, while not appearing to undermine her boss. Can they have it all? What would Betty Friedan think?
Julia occasionally forgets to be subtle. Episode one ends with Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’, just in case the message wasn’t loud enough, and the voice of the modern day sometimes creeps in. Hunter is desperate for “new content, yesterday!”, while Alice is “one girl, in a sea of men”. It takes a little too long to rev up, and there is a sense that the early episodes have overloaded plates, which leads to less Julia on screen. Without her, the story feels adrift. It isn’t until the fourth episode that the old gang are finally brought back together.
When it plumps for acid over sugar, however, it finds its form. Stockard Channing makes a brief, bright appearance as Frannie, an oil heiress from Ohio, travelling with chef and author James Beard, who is surprised when a dish of his own arrives at the house. At a fractious dinner, where the guests are supposed to adjudicate between the warring Julia and Simca by voting for the food they like best, Frannie delivers a wonderfully spiky speech about dependence and what it means to be “kept” by another person, laying the foundations for marital disruption. Simca, meanwhile, cannot abide Julia’s Americanised tweaks of the French classics. “I love her like my sister,” she declares. “You hate your sister,” Jean reminds her.
Julia is a uniquely indulgent watch, erudite and gorgeous and heady. It isn’t without its flaws: season two needs more Julia, and it takes its time to work on the winning recipe, but it is such a warm pleasure that it’s easy to simply sink in to its richness, pastry fish and all.
• Julia is on Sky Atlantic and Now in the UK and on Binge in Australia
