19: The Menu (2022)
An evening at one of the world’s most exclusive restaurants, where a young foodie brings a backup date and she doesn’t have a good dining experience.
A dark comedy about food as art and experience, the business of that, and the us versus them of the service industry.
And no, the secret ingredient is not cannibalism! Food culture and other high culture experiences can be weird and creepy enough without human flesh as an option. Indeed, a whole lot of other weird and creepy things happen along the way.
The humour is very dark, undercut with some goofier jokes mostly provided by just how clueless one of our guests is. It’s a fun time if you’re like me.
Ralph Fiennes’s purposely mid-Atlantic accent helps conceal that Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult are both doing different American accents.
With its mostly single room setting and small cast I could see this working as a play.
And yes, it left me wanting to try one of the dishes. Just the one though.
The medium: Channel 4’s Saturday night premiere, also available here on Disney+ as part of Fox
Gameability: For the same reasons it could work as a play it could also work as a LARP or other one-shot. And the style could inform games about joining or infiltrating elitist events like con and heist games even if they don’t go this sideways.
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