Have you heard of Viva Daisy? – Food on the Tube

I watch a lot of Food Network. It’s pretty much my default channel when there is nothing that I specifically want to watch on TV. Because of this, I was very surprised when my brother recently told me that he had caught a new show on the Food Network that I hadn’t even heard of, let alone seen. It turned out that the show in question was Viva Daisy, a six part series featuring Latin cuisine chef Daisy Martinez.

My brother advertised the show as “horrible.” After watching the show for myself, I have to say that I concur. However, I don’t think the blame for the show lies with Daisy Martinez, herself. Instead, the poor production value and sloppy camera work are the most offensive things about the show.

I actually feel bad for Daisy. She isn’t all that bad on camera (no worse than a lot of the current chefs were in their first few episodes), and her food looks really good. She’s just not being well served by the production on the show. The camera work is all over the place. It seems like they are trying for the classic Food Network style of the wide kitchen shot interspersed with close ups. I’m not sure if you know this or not, but for most of the shows on the Food Network, this style is accomplished by shooting an entire show twice: once for the wide shot all the way through, and then a second time for the close ups. On Viva Daisy, there are a lot of fast moving camera shots and cuts, with zoom ins and zoom outs to try to accomplish this look. It doesn’t work to say the least. The herky-jerky camera style was visually jarring and actually started to make me a little dizzy as I watched it.

I wonder if the Food Network realized this before the show aired, because there has been barely any hype or advertising for the show, especially compared to a lot of the new shows that they feature. For example, they’re pushing the crap out of Will Work for Food, it seems like there is an ad for it at least two or three times per show. Further, Daisy Martinez doesn’t even appear on the front page of the Food Network website with the rest of the TV chefs.

As I said before the food looks great (check out this recipe for halibut with an olive tapenade), so I hope they give Daisy another chance with a better show.