The Metropolis

Service to Smile About

Cila Warncke | Monday 14 March, 2011 20:16

After watching all eight episodes of BBC2 show Michel Roux’s Service in succession (thanks be to iPlayer! ) I am awestruck and mightily curious as to what the hell went on in the pitch meeting. How—in a television culture ruled by bullying bosses, fame-famished exhibitionists and shows pandering to the lowest common denominator—did a programme make it to air featuring no big money prizes, no back-stabbing, no shouting, no binge drinking, no undercover fumbling and, most of all, no ritual humiliation?

Perhaps the Beeb bosses thought they had Hell’s Kitchen meets Skins on their hands. Service certainly had the potential. Roux says he chose the eight original participants to reflect the “the disaffection of the current generation” – and boy, did they ever. Council estate lad Ashley left school at 14 and his only ‘qualification’ was an ASBO. Single mum Nikkita had a whole portion of chips on her shoulder. Gobby 18-year-old school dinner-lady Brooke wore her chest like a weapon, and Jamal’s histrionics would have made him goldmine Big Brother material. The first major clue that Service wasn’t dishing up more of the same was when Roux calmly, quietly removed Jamal from the show for indulging in the kind of bitchy backchat that is the lifeblood of 99% of reality TV. My guess is neither the contestants nor the BBC quite bargained on Roux’s rules.

Gliding through cock-ups, catastrophes, tears and tantrums like some sort of Ghandi of haute cuisine, Roux confounded my expectations of television and, more importantly, the kids’ expectations of themselves. To start with, most of them carried themselves like feral cats: half-scared, half ready to scratch your eyes out. Early episodes were watch-through-fingers stuff as they snarled, shoved, snapped at customers and generally lived up to every negative stereotype going. The nadir was when Brooke took time out from ringing up bacon sarnies at a café to give her number to a greasy youth. Roux took her aside and, in one of the series’ more memorable lines, reminded her “this is a restaurant, not a knocking shop.” In any other reality TV show Brooke would have been up for elimination, but in the world of Service everyone got a second chance, and a third. In fact, they got as many chances as they needed to get it right, and the transformations were amazing. Not only did they learn the difference between prosecco and prosciutto, and how to fillet a fish, but they quit lashing out and acting up. They pulled together. The boys stopped strutting; the girls stopped relying on skimpy tops to get attention; they started showing signs of self-respect.

By the finale, when the seven youngsters took over Roux’s Michelin-starred restaurant La Gavroche, they were a cohesive, charming, confident team. The fabulously subversive bit is the contestants developed this sense of pride while working in service, a job most Brits wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. This, too, is part of Michel’s master-plan. “It is about time the British threw out the misconceived idea of service being servitude,” he says. The contrast between the by-then utterly gracious servers and posh, petulant diners was a delectable twist in the fairy tale. Not only did Service help a group of struggling young people find a purpose; it struck a blow at the snobbery and preconceptions that would otherwise have kept them on the outside looking in. Who knows? Maybe the revolution will be televised.

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