Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat

Last updated
Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat
Genre Satire, documentary
Based on A Modest Proposal
Written byMatt Edmonds
Directed by Tom Kingsley
Presented by Gregg Wallace
Michelle Ackerley
StarringClaire Ashton
Stephen Chapman
Joan Hodges
Julianna Kurokawa
Michel Albert Roux
Country of originUnited Kingdom
Original languageEnglish
Production
Executive producerJack Kennedy
ProducerJonathan Levene
CinematographyJakob Cizic
EditorJon Dean
Running time23 minutes
Original release
Network Channel 4
Release24 July 2023 (2023-07-24)

Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat is a satirical documentary written by Matt Edmonds and presented by Gregg Wallace, [1] and co-presented by Michelle Ackerley. [2] It was first broadcast on 24 July 2023 on the British television channel, Channel 4. [3] It depicts the development in food technology by which a British industry produces a large amount of genetically engineered human meat. It was later revealed as a mockumentary based on a satirical essay, A Modest Proposal , by Jonathan Swift in 1729 that urged poor Irish people to sell their children to the rich as food. [4] The Guardian reported it as "one of the best hoaxes in media history", [5] and as Barbara Ellen described, "[It was] a sociopolitical mockumentary, a straight-faced, grimly cannibalistic satire on the cost of living crisis." [6]

Contents

Summary

Channel 4 describes the theme of the film: "With food prices soaring, Gregg Wallace investigates a controversial new lab-grown meat product that its makers claim could provide a solution to the cost-of-living crisis." [3] In a format similar to the series Inside the Factory (also presented by Wallace), the documentary features a tour of Good Harvest, a secret food industry in Lincolnshire that had succeeded in making cheap and fresh meat that will cut down the cost of living. The meats were made from human tissues in the form of cakes. The donors were paid "two weeks' worth of energy bills" for about a pound of flesh they gave, [5] more specifically, £250 for a single buttock, double is £400. [7] The CEO of the company, Tamara Ennett, explained the procedure of collecting the flesh as "pain-subjective". [2]

The meat samples were grown in the laboratory, and genetically modified using the flesh cells to produce large pieces of meat. Wallace remarked: "under EU law, we couldn't possibly operate machines like this due to legislation. But now [after Brexit] we can harvest people and pay them for their flesh," and concludes the film: "So it's no surprise eating children seems a more likely path for our country." [3]

Wallace then travels to London for a taste test at Le Gavroche with Michel Roux Jr. [3] Trying out three different samples of meat, [2] they agree that the best was the "premium", [6] later revealed to be from children under age seven [3] who had just played to relax their muscles, [6] as Wallace explained: "Like livestock on the way to the abattoir, any stress could affect the quality of their meat." [2]

Revelation and reactions

It was later revealed that the documentary was a parody based on Jonathan Swift's satirical essay, A Modest Proposal , written in 1729. Swift had suggested that poor Irish people should sell their children to the rich as food. The essay was also shown in the credits. [4] Wallace wrote in Instagram a day after the broadcast: "Thank you for watching. I really enjoyed my first acting job!" [8] Good Harvest was a fake factory. [3] The director, Tom Kingsley explained, "Our intention wasn't to create a hoax – it was just that we felt the satire would be more powerful if it caught people by surprise." [4]

In a review in The Guardian , Lucy Mangan described it as "cleverly executed" and expressed her initial surprise, "It took a shamefully long time for me to work out what was going on... But for anyone even more gullible than I am, and especially if they have read their Swift, the next twist leaves no room for doubt about what is – quite unexpectedly on a weekday evening from mischievous Channel 4 and writer Matt Edmonds – actually happening." [2] Susan Fitzmaurice in The Conversation commented, saying, "It succeeded in generating the heat because it tapped into the anger and passion that people feel about the current state of affairs. It was savage satire." [9]

Anita Singh reviewed in The Telegraph with a critical comment, saying, "It would have worked far better as an advert for vegetarianism. Instead it played out like a Black Mirror episode stripped of cleverness and subtlety." [10] Neil Armstrong on BBC Culture also noted that "a couple of members of Parliament condemned it and some who watched insisted that, even as satire, it had been – forgive the pun – in poor taste." [4] Michael Odell in the Evening Standard also criticised, remarking, "Just as I was about to ring family living up North [as Wallace's team would like to taste people from the region] and tell them to lock all doors or shoot Wallace on sight (to be honest, some are already prepared for the latter) the 'mockumentary’' lost its satirical power. [11]

Related Research Articles

<i>A Modest Proposal</i> 1729 satirical essay by Jonathan Swift

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in 1729.

Islamic dietary laws are laws that Muslims follow in their diet. Islamic jurisprudence specifies which foods are halal and which are haram. The dietary laws are found in the Quran, the holy book of Islam, as well as in collections of traditions attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toad in the hole</span> Traditional English dish

Toad in the hole is a traditional English dish consisting of sausages in Yorkshire pudding batter, usually served with onion gravy and vegetables. Historically, the dish has also been prepared using other meats, such as rump steak and lamb's kidney. In the 21st century, vegetarian and vegan versions have appeared.

The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It was a lifetime award in that previous winners were not eligible. At least from 2000 the prize was £1,500. The prize was apparently discontinued after 2016, though no formal announcement appears to have been made.

Hufu was a joke product marketed as tofu designed to resemble human flesh in taste and texture. The tongue-in-cheek Hufu website was in existence from May 2005 to June 2006. The creators claimed that Milla Jovovich coined the term after hearing about the product's development while on a Eurostar train from London to Paris.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Greggs</span> Bakery chain in the United Kingdom

Greggs plc is a British bakery chain. It specialises in savoury products such as bakes, sausage rolls, sandwiches and sweet items including doughnuts and vanilla slices. It is headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. Originally a high street chain, it has since entered the convenience and drive-thru markets.

A pseudo-documentary or fake documentary is a film or video production that takes the form or style of a documentary film but does not portray real events. Rather, scripted and fictional elements are used to tell the story. The pseudo-documentary, unlike the related mockumentary, is not always intended as satire or humor. It may use documentary camera techniques but with fabricated sets, actors, or situations, and it may use digital effects to alter the filmed scene or even create a wholly synthetic scene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature documentary</span> Documentary film genre

A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures. Nature documentaries usually concentrate on video taken in the subject's natural habitat, but often including footage of trained and captive animals, too. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gregg Wallace</span> English presenter, entrepreneur and writer (born 1964)

Gregg Allan Wallace is an English television presenter, entrepreneur and writer. He is known for co-presenting MasterChef, Celebrity MasterChef and MasterChef: The Professionals on BBC One and BBC Two. He has written regularly for Good Food, Now and Olive magazines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Food loss and waste</span> Food that is discarded, lost or uneaten

Food loss and waste is food that is not eaten. The causes of food waste or loss are numerous and occur throughout the food system, during production, processing, distribution, retail and food service sales, and consumption. Overall, about one-third of the world's food is thrown away. A 2021 meta-analysis, that did not include food lost during production, by the United Nations Environment Programme found that food waste was a challenge in all countries at all levels of economic development. The analysis estimated that global food waste was 931 million tonnes of food waste across three sectors: 61 percent from households, 26 percent from food service and 13 percent from retail.

<i>Eating Animals</i> 2009 book by Jonathan Safran Foer

Eating Animals is the third book by the American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2009. A New York Times best-seller, Eating Animals provides a dense discussion of what it means to eat animals in an industrialized world. It was written in close collaboration with Farm Forward, a US nonprofit organization promoting veganism and sustainable agriculture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Individual action on climate change</span> What people can do individually to stop global warming

Individual action on climate change can include personal choices in many areas, such as diet, travel, household energy use, consumption of goods and services, and family size. Individuals can also engage in local and political advocacy around issues of climate change. People who wish to reduce their carbon footprint, can take "high-impact" actions, such as avoiding frequent flying and petrol fuelled cars, eating mainly a plant-based diet, having fewer children, using clothes and electrical products for longer, and electrifying homes. Avoiding meat and dairy foods has been called "the single biggest way" an individual can reduce their environmental impact. Excessive consumption is more to blame for climate change than population increase. High consumption lifestyles have a greater environmental impact, with the richest 10% of people emitting about half the total lifestyle emissions.

Amanda White is a Canadian producer. She is a partner in iam8bit, a production company, marketing boutique and artist collective, along with Jon M. Gibson.

Jenny Naomi Kleeman is a British journalist, author and broadcaster. She presents programmes on BBC Radio 4 and has reported for Channel 4's foreign affairs series Unreported World and BBC One's Panorama,. She regularly writes for The Guardian and The Sunday Times Magazine.

Christopher Bavin is a television presenter and fresh produce importer, known for co-presenting Britain's Best Home Cook, Eat Well for Less?, Britain in Bloom, Food: Truth or Scare, and is one of the presenters on Tomorrow's Food, and a multitude of consumer affairs programmes, all shown on BBC One.

Oobah Butler is an English author and filmmaker. In 2017 he created The Shed at Dulwich, a fictional restaurant which became the top-rated venue in London on TripAdvisor despite having never served a dish. In April 2019, Butler's debut book How to Bullsh*t Your Way To Number 1 was published and became an LA Times bestseller. In 2021, he became co-host of Catfish UK. In 2023 he released his documentary The Great Amazon Heist on Channel 4.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Planetary health diet</span> Flexitarian diet created by the EAT-Lancet commission

The planetary health diet, also called a planetary diet or planetarian diet, is a flexitarian diet created by the EAT-Lancet commission as part of a report released in The Lancet on 16 January 2019. The aim of the report and the diet it developed is to create dietary paradigms that have the following aims:

A vegan school meal or vegan school lunch or vegan school dinner or vegan hot lunch is a vegan option provided as a school meal. A small number of schools around the world serve vegan food or are vegan schools, serving exclusively vegan food.

The Trojan Horse Affair is a 2022 podcast about the Trojan Horse scandal. The eight-episode series is hosted by Brian Reed, formerly a producer of This American Life and host of the podcast S-Town, and Hamza Syed, a reporter from Birmingham, England where the Trojan Horse scandal had unfolded.

References

  1. ↑ Heritage, Stuart (2023-07-25). "'The anger of it will linger for years' – is The British Miracle Meat the most disturbing TV satire ever?". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-07-29.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Mangan, Lucy (2023-07-24). "Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat review – this look at eating human flesh is a total curveball". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Lewis, Isobel (2023-07-27). "Channel 4 viewers bamboozled by Gregg Wallace mockumentary about 'eating human meat'". The Independent. Retrieved 2023-07-29.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Armstrong, Neil (2023-07-28). "The hoax 'documentary' about human flesh-eating that shocked the UK". www.bbc.com. Retrieved 2023-07-29.
  5. 1 2 Rose, Steve (2023-07-26). "The British Miracle Meat: the story behind one of the best TV hoaxes in history". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2023-07-31.
  6. 1 2 3 Ellen, Barbara (2023-07-30). "The week in television: Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat; Reframed: Marilyn Monroe; Dreaming Whilst Black; Special Ops: Lioness – review". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved 2023-07-31.
  7. ↑ Lawes, Ruth (2023-07-27). "Gregg Wallace's 'human meat' documentary is not as barbaric as it sounds". Metro. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  8. ↑ Harrison, Ellie (2023-07-25). "Gregg Wallace jokes he really enjoyed his first acting job in Channel 4 mockumentary". The Independent. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  9. ↑ Fitzmaurice, Susan (2023-07-28). "Channel 4's shocking Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat owes much to Swift and his gruesome satire". The Conversation. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  10. ↑ Singh, Anita (2023-07-24). "Gregg Wallace: The British Miracle Meat, review: if Black Mirror were starved of subtlety". The Telegraph. ISSN   0307-1235 . Retrieved 2023-08-02.
  11. ↑ Odell, Michael (2023-07-26). "The British Miracle Meat – Gregg Wallace cannibal satire is overcooked". Evening Standard. Retrieved 2023-08-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.