Skip intro?
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
No thank you.
To eschew the garnish of Donna Hay Christmas now streaming on Disney+ is to miss the point entirely.
We're in that special place where shredded linen bunting blows in the gentle sea breeze of a family home in a part of town where the local council won't sting you for an ugly, equity-threatening fence even if it would be the only thing standing between your guests and a death-plunge down your backyard cliff.
Sprigs of rosemary?
Try branches.
The gumnuts are huge, too. May Gibbs, who lived just down the road, would be shocked.
Hay - the magazine scribbler who would one day welcome Oprah to Sydney - is now a household name brand but she reminds us relentlessly across these four, picture-perfect episodes she is a food "starlest" (stylist) at heart and, as such, presentation is as important as digestion.
Amid all the wistful, slow-mo table-setting interludes and general stirrings and zestings, Hay also reminds us she is here to help us beat the clock this festive (eating) season.
"My potato gratins and green bean prosciutto bundles are absolute time-savers," she says.
This is, of course, rubbish.
Nothing on this show is going to save you time as you slave in the kitchen for your collection of ingrates on Christmas Day and the only genuine "styling shortcuts" aren't coming from Hay, they're supplied by that slightly unhinged voice in your head that says a perfectly adequate yuletide centrepiece comprises the sticky Tupperware salt and pepper shakers from the back of the pantry and the tomato sauce bottle with the perpetually weeping nozzle which makes it look like a schoolchild's volcano experiment or the victim of a particularly stubborn disease.
Just like Jamie Oliver and his apocryphal 15-minute meals, Hay clearly has an army of helpers at her disposal to make this all look quick, easy and fun but who cares when she's serving food so beautiful it would be a crime to destroy it.
And speaking of crime, a lot of TV chefs really do have something of the cult leader about them.
Charismatic and charming, they use a suspiciously copious amount of alfoil, have that steely glint of determination in their eye and prey on us at our most vulnerable time (a few weeks out from Christmas).
READ MORE:
They build us up and tear us down. They make promises we can't keep and we know they're not the type to suffer dissent.
And just when we've had enough of their lies and their dictatorial kitchen hacks (Sea Commander Oliver insists a damp tea towel be placed under every chopping board) and we summon the courage to leave the compound and make a break for the real, buntingless world, they pull off something so remarkable, so irrefutably genius, we can't help but surrender to just one more glass of juniper-infused Kool-Aid.
"Once you try a double-glazed ham, it will be really hard for you to go back," Hay says, knowingly.
Boy oh boy, she's not wrong.
Is this legal, are you even allowed to glaze a ham twice, you ask yourself as you watch the toddler-sized pig leg glisten on Hay's counter next her pristine white cooktop, its technology perhaps a gift from some alien civilisation.
As we salivate and think how Homer once wondered what kind of "wonderful, magical animal" could possibly be responsible for bacon, ham and pork chops, we begin to take serious notice of Hay.
This is a precarious time for the viewer. Blinded by the unctuous basting and all that bunting, we're seduced and begin to think dangerous thoughts:
My kitchen suddenly seems pathetically devoid of microherbs.
What can I use instead of ceramic baking beads? Marbles? Rocks? Mulch?
By the time Hay is performing an act of mathematical precision to produce a pavlova, you're pretty much a zealot to her teachings and are making plans to ensure Christmas at your place this year will have all the trimmings, just like hers.
Obviously, our big December lunch won't turn out anything like the ones we see on these kinds of fiendishly timed, heavily stylised morsels of kitchen fiction, but they certainly get your juices flowing to try something a little different these holidays.
And when your feast inevitably fails?
More bunting.
