Over the year , we ’ve see many best - sell novel accommodate into film — Hunger Games , Harry Potter , Room , et cetera — but rarely do we get well - selling non - fabrication flex into documentaries . So when Netflix announce its raw docu - seriesCooked , I was excited to seeMichael Pollan ’s latest bookadapted into a show , but also intrigued by how the Godhead would maybe rede Pollan ’s in - depth look at food preparation into a short , four - part infotainment .
If you had never readCooked , your ultimate conclusion might be they did it hurriedly . But if you ’re a pocket-sized husbandman , and specially one who has study the Christian Bible , you may see it differently . Your summary of their interpretation may be “ attractively . ”
The show follows the same premise as the book : It take the four basic elements — Fire , Water , Air and Earth — and turns each one into an installment on how it relates to cooking . In “ Fire , ” for instance , Pollan discusses the role cooking by flame has had on human evolution , traditio and , community of interests .
“ When we find out to cook was when we became truly human ” he enunciate , introducing the sequence .
The next episode , “ Water , ” take on a flavour at our use of the cadaver raft , the importance of its invention , and our general , and somewhat tragical , lost connection to food for thought preparedness . Pollan cut into into bread - making in “ Air , ” and likewise , into gluten intolerance and how perhaps few multitude may get this affliction if the gluten we were consuming was view a right fermentation . The series digs further intofermentationin “ globe ” by take a smell at the making ofcheese , kimchi , beer and so on — and the elegantly complex microbiology behind it .
It is confessedly a luck for a scant documentary film and does sometimes come off feeling as cramped as that last paragraph . But any projection screen adaptation of a book is a lot . Rarely does a motion picture do the account book full judge . In this series , for instance , you come across some of the characters from the book but not all . You touch on some ideas , but not every . There are compromises one must take in translating a book onto the screen — ideas you but ca n’t fit into a film . For that reason , shows , movies and documentary film should never be considered an alternative to the work that inspires them . Or put another manner , Cookedthe series is not a replacing forCookedthe book . Rather , it ’s a lovely and tuneful overture , and one that farmers might find worthful to their work .
Why farmers ?
It is intemperate to neglect the Department of Agriculture here . Yes , many farms and farmers are visited throughout the series , but food ’s human relationship to husbandry is more profound than that . Cookedis farm - to - table , farm - to - factory , manufactory - to - manufactory , before farming , after it , all at once . In the “ Fire ” sequence , you do n’t just get the distinctive machismo - fuel jubilation of gluttony that barbecue is so often betrayed as on television . You see its historical circumstance and it ’s grandness to the community . You see where the hogs get along from , where they go , and how the routine of wangle them bring communities — and races and ethnicities — together .
It always enrich what you do to have a cultural understanding of your craft — agriculture is no different . For that reason , Cookedthe series offers a unequalled and broad linear perspective not just on cookery or farming , but on food as a whole . If it then sparks in you a desire to dig deeper , there is a record to facilitate satisfy that oddment — to give you an even brighter illumination of what we as farmers in the end do : create rude ingredients for the ancient and biotic community - binding bit that is cooking . But of course , if it ’s the busy season and you just need a good show to watch , Cookedcan do that , too .
Beautifully .
