On Max in 2022, and a year and a half later, on HBO

Should I even ask? Will nothing whatsoever be produced for HBO from now
on? Will everything premiere on Max?

In a certain era in America, everybody's mother had a copy of Mastering
the Art of French Cooking or, later, The French Chef Cookbook, on the
shelf in the kitchen. Julia Child's recipes were famous.

I've read the introduction to The French Chef Cookbook in which Julia
describes how the tv series came to be.

Well... we get this show.

I've heard of it for several year. I note that it's been in
pre-production since 2019, when Joan Cusak was attached to it. It's now
Sarah Lancashire, a very popular and very well paid actress from British
television. Recently she's been on Last Tango in Halifax.

She doesn't quite get Julia Child's shrill voice right, but that's ok. I
recall that her voice was just a bit higher.

Of course Sarah Lancashire ain't 6'2"; she's a head shorter. But that's
ok.

What really impressed me: The home set looked right. We saw Julie Child
work out of her own kitchen in later series. Mostly she needed wall
space for pans and knives. As she said, she had enough cooking utensils
to open a small restaurant.

I knew this was going to be heavily fictionalized, and it was, but I
gave it a chance and didn't hate it. I liked Lancashire's performance.
David Hyde Pierce is terrific as Paul, but he's great in everything.

The trouble with the series is that all the men are portrayed as
condescending toward women. Paul couldn't see that she was going to be a
great success for the next three decades and had to be talked into it.

There are very important people in her life who are missing. Everybody
remembers Simone Beck (Simca) as the other author of Mastering, but
there's a third woman, Louisette Bertholle. She's not mentioned. In the
tv series, Simca is played by Isabella Rossolini. Julia and Simca have
an argument about cooking techniques that turns into a fight on a $25
trans-Atlantic phone call.

Julia and Paul spent a significant part of each year in France after he
retired from the foreign service. They'd build a small home on property
owned by Simca and her husband. Simca was her very best friend; that
argument was stupid.

In real life, Julia attended cooking school after WWII after eating a
sumptuous meal in a French restaurant. Le Cordon Bleu! The two French
women knew each other first, tried to write a French cookbook for
Americans, but weren't successful till they met Julia Child. The three
women had an informal school for American women in France out of Julia's
kitchen. The patch she always wore on The French Chef was in honor of
this informal school the three women ran.

Mastering grew out of years of training and teaching other women. By the
time the tv series came on the air, Julia truly had expertise.

The tv series doesn't mention this stuff. Actually, the post war years
in France might have made for a number of good episodes.

Who else is missing? Where's Ruth Lockwood? Julia Child was always quite
complimentary of her, bouncing ideas of her, making absolutely creative
use of television, and able to work with a rank amateur television
performer like Julia.

Instead we get a fictionalized junior staffer at WGBH Alice Naman
(Brittany Bradford) who was her champion with the men.

Uh, no. Julia got on tv because a friend from Paris literally worked at
WGBH and got her to promote Mastering on the book review show. And no,
she didn't make a whole omlette using a hot plate that was a complete
surprise to the host; she beat egg whites.

I hope the Paul character gets fixed. He was her partner and her biggest
champion and on the tv show, washed the pots and pans.