The Tasty Bits of ‘Julia’

Late in November Max dropped the second season of its titular biopic show, Julia, and boy does it deliciously deliver once again. The series, starring Sarah Lancashire, does nothing to stave off our cultural love affair with Child, who left this mortal realm in 2004. In her second run as the Kitchen Queen, Lancashire remains delightful and doesn’t fall prey to the easy target of doing a cartoonish take on Child’s voice, but you know, celebrates her as an actual human. And as always, her husband Paul is there while their love affair continues to be the show’s heart, even beyond her cooking. But so are the cast of characters at WGBH who live in the wake of Child’s show The French Chef, whose massive success, in its second season, steamrolls anything else across the public television airwaves.

I’ve grown to adore Julia Child for her oeuvre of shows, recipes that still stack up against most of what television chefs try to execute today, along with her infectious persona. When the first season of Julia aired last year, it felt like an emotional salve so many of us needed. There’s still a place for Julia Child in this world.

Julia Child will forever make me think of my great-grandmother. An immediate adopter of Child’s place in America’s heart in the 1960s, she like Child, wanted to see how far she could go with the burners turned low and slow, waiting for something good to percolate. Child was the American authority of French cooking when the vast majority of our households knew nothing about stinky cheeses or what a garlic press was. Julia Child taught America how to saute, stew and broil. (Her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking has sold over 1.5 million copies.)

As an Irish immigrant, my Nana bonded with Child’s sensibilities. While I remember her in her very golden years, my mom and aunt recall that she’d always cite Child when referencing anything in the kitchen, “Julia always says….” When she died, I was 16 and hardly the gourmand I am today. I think she’d be pleased that I love food. I love to experience it, to cook, and to write about it. And I’m sure she’d love ‘Julia.’

Season two of Julia isn’t straight into the frying pan; instead, it’s a slow concoction of flavors. Child isn’t in Boston but is in the French countryside, doing her best to recharge her emotional and mental batteries. There, Child dines on rural French foods and enjoys the minor pleasures of French pastries, technique, and produce. Simca (Isabella Rossellini, also recently seen judging a Julia Child-themed episode of ‘Chopped’) and Child are trying to finalize the recipes for their next cookbook, but the women can’t seem to not beef with one another; Simca doesn’t like that Child wants to experiment with French cuisine, and Child doesn’t like that Simca won’t explore the possibilities of what food has to offer. (There’s also an undertone that Simca is jealous of Child’s American fame.) But, after 72 days from the studio, it’s time for Julia Child to get back to the kitchen.

Returning to Boston, it’s immediately apparent that for Child, her little show is no longer a fun project, but now is the center of the station, but also for so many people in her orbit.

French Chef producer Alice (Brittany Bradford) and Julia’s book editor, Judith (Fiona Glascott), must be part of the Julia Child Machine in their unique ways, which also gobble at their emotional well-being.

Throughout the first few episodes of Julia, we have to keep up with a lot as everyone involved deals with new experiences, some better than others, from Alice’s visit to a gynecologist to Child realizing the weight of this world she’s created, which is no longer a sleepy little project for Boston housewives to learn how to make a béschamel sauce. One thing that’s clear within season two, like the first season, is that the male characters in the show serve as set props. The women drive Julia’s story.

Paul, Julia’s husband (David Hyde Pierce), is a cute addition, while Russ Morash (Fran Kranz), the TV producer, is a lost man in the changing social landscape, but really, they’re both just there to move the story along; a little sprinkle of flavor, if you will. Veteran actors like Bebe Neuwirth starring as Julia’s best friend Avis, delivers the goods scene after scene, while Rachel Bloom joins the cast as Elaine Levitch, a CBS producer who brings new energy to WGBH.

Julia is a look back in time to a different America, dominated by men who, in many respects, got to their perches having done very little to get there. Season two of Julia is a charming and (a needed) stroll down into a collective memory lane, one that makes me wish I could have seen my Nana’s excitement as she was close in age as Child, who probably saw something in the icon that represented things she wanted, too. I’m glad someone is telling Child’s story so I can at least imagine what those afternoons watching her felt like back then.

New episodes of Julia drop every Thursday on Max.