Spotless burgers1/27/2024 And barbecue freshwater fish from the Heilong River up near the Russian border. I’ve heard tell of barbecue starfish being an object of desire in coastal Shandong. But in restaurants on the western edge of China, there’s a good chance of finding barbecue lamb. ![]() Barbecue seems to have its roots in Canton. And it’s not just marked in the names, but in the windows where whole ducks hang, and hunks of dark red pork cry out for consumption in quantity. In Cantonese, barbecue is known as siu mai. You can’t follow the pork without a scorecard. But the explosion of tasty Asian spots, mostly Chinese, with “BBQ” in their names has opened a brave new world of extreme - and extremely satisfying - flavors, with barbecue found in virtually all the culinary regions of China. In one incarnation, BBQ was a clarion call for those hungry for the beef of Texas and the pork of the South - and often in these well-melded parts, for shops selling both. The show has the potential to become an export as beloved as shows like “Wallander” and “The Fall” - too smart for the mainstream and pleasing for those of us who consider ourselves above watching “Bones.There are probably no three letters in a restaurant name that make me hungrier than B, B and Q. It doesn’t condescend to its audience with heavy foreshadowing. There are some inventive twists and well-placed comic moments. Aside from his skills with bleach and a Q-tip, there’s very little so far that compels one to root for this hero to succeed.īut that’s hardly a reason to dismiss the show entirely. Defined from the outset as a cheater, he comes across as pensive brat whose hot, supportive wife isn’t enough to keep him satisfied. Like a knock-off Jonathan Rhys Myers, he’s aloof and unapproachably handsome. What will make us tune in week after week on “Spotless” when Jean will presumably be cleaning his way out of trouble?īy the rules of American television, there has to be something likeable or at least admirable about our protagonist Jean. But the crucial question is, Where will the suspense lie? In “Breaking Bad” the fun was derived from watching this brilliant scientist outsmart his foes using his considerable skills. In just the first two episodes, the show’s creators - Ed McCardie and Corinne Marrinan of “Shameless” and “CSI” respectively - have presented some potentially compelling characters. Show' Revival Picks Up Where Original Left Off This won’t end well.Īlso Read: 'W/ Bob and David' Review: Netflix's 'Mr. He enlists Jean as his own personal murder Swiffer, there to clean up his villainous trail. He falls within the orbit of mob boss Nelson Clay, played by Brendan Coyle (better known as Bates, the source of the most boring plot lines on “Downton Abbey”). It’s only when his estranged brother comes back into town - carting with him a dead drug mule with a stomach full of saleable heroin - that Jean goes rogue. As an adult, Jean is still trying to scrub it away, running his own crime scene cleanup business for which he regularly gets elbow deep in enough blood and brain splatter to make the set designers of “Dexter” salivate. ![]() ![]() Haunted by a childhood trauma that appears in flashback to have taken place in post-apocalyptic Panem (but it was probably just somewhere in the French countryside), Jean and his brother Martin (played as an adult by Denis Ménochet) are involved in a gruesome crime. In “Spotless,” the first scripted drama series from Esquire, we find another hero who is forced to ply his craft at the service of the underworld, hoping to maintain the crumbling facade of his happy middle class life.īut that’s where the paths of Walter White and Jean Bastiere (André Grondin) diverge. Walter White of “Breaking Bad,” for example, was pressed into the service of meth-making once bills and a cancer diagnosis gave him few alternatives.
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