By Mark HadleyMonday 11 Apr 2011TV and StreamingReading Time: 2 minutes
Conviction Kitchen
Rating: PG
Distributor: Channel Seven
Release Date: Mondays, 9:00 PM
Conviction Kitchen is not just good television, it’s an honest insight into how difficult it can be to put the past behind us.
Seven’s Conviction Kitchen is the local version of a Canadian program that saw criminals slave in a professional kitchen for a new start in life. In the Australian series 17 offenders with records ranging from break-and-enters to drug offences were given the chance to work in the Conviction restaurant under Chef Ian Curley. Those who made it through the initial training were awarded with positions in the front of house or the kitchen, where they came to face all the stress a professional establishment could dish up. In the past weeks viewers have seen promising candidates fall by the wayside while others push on towards the two full-time positions on offer at the end of the show.
Australia has had a large serving of ‘life-transforming’ cooking stories over the past four years, from Jamie’s Kitchen through to Masterchef. And in every series to date we’ve seen humble housewives or wayward teens overcome their lack of experience to claim well-earned success. But I don’t think any show has ever presented such a yawning gulf for challengers to cross. It only takes a few episodes to realise that yelling at these raw recruits to ‘pull their socks up’ isn’t going to work. The participants in Conviction Kitchen are starting at an incredible disadvantage to your average contestant. Their personal weaknesses have already sunk them as far down as prison, and it is those persistent problems – uncontrollable anger, the inability to assert themselves, a fear of rejection – that threaten them far more than any culinary failure. They don’t just need to become master chefs; they have to reinvent themselves.
This series is full of the usual hard-nosed hospitality characters that we’ve come to expect from our cooking shows – Ian Curley is no shrinking violet. But Conviction Kitchen’s secret ingredient is a significant serving of sympathy. “Just because I’ve been in jail doesn’t mean it’s the end for me,” says Lisa, a single mum on probation struggling to get to shifts and take care of her two sons. And the every member of the team is behind her because they see the potential for her life to turn around. However what Conviction Kitchen demonstrates is just how difficult it is to overcome our failures and their consequences. It also shows how empty self-help philosophies can be. The contestants need someone like Chef Curley to see a potential in them they may not even glimpse – just like we need a God to carry us beyond our sins to a world we cannot see.