TV Review: Dolce Vito – Dream Restaurant/The Scots Who Fought Franco

Published on Thursday 13 August 2009 19:07

Dolce Vito – Dream Restaurant Channel 4 The Scots Who Fought Franco STV

ITALIAN restaurateur Vita Cataffo believes that British food is the best in the world, a claim which seems to me rather like a professor of black American culture maintaining that Jamie Cullum is the greatest jazz musician of all time.

Nevertheless, Vito is so adamant in this belief he has decided to open a British restaurant in the heart of Italy.

What's that you say? Sounds like the source material for yet another documentary series in which a plucky entrepreneur chases their crazy dream in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Dolce Vito – Dream Restaurant.

I don't envy Vito in his attempts to convince sceptical Italians of the wonders of the ploughman's lunch. He is, however, willing to risk everything to succeed, which is just as well as these race-against-time mission docs positively demand that of their protagonists.

Someone deciding halfway through episode two that, actually, sailing that replica of the Mary Rose down the Limpopo is a massive waste of time and money, does not good telly make.

Vito appears to be played by Donald Pleasance and is therefore slightly alarming. Ebullient to the point of mania, he doesn't speak, he exclaims. Constantly. For half an hour. It's rather wearing.

Some of his exclamations sounded bizarre, even in context.

Potential T-Shirt slogans included: "for a young man you know a lot about meat don't you?" as well as "I'm three times your age and you're sweating like an old boy!" and simply "I want that cheese!".

All of which makes Vito sound more entertaining than he actually is, when in fact neither he nor his mission are really that exciting. Despite the expense, I don't believe that a man who owns a chain of highly successful Italian restaurants in the UK runs the risk of losing everything on this venture.

Nor can I see him failing if he continues to import the finest produce that Britain has to offer. If he'd filled his menu with nothing other than Scotch eggs, Square Crisps and Bovril then we might have been in for some choice calamity.

As it stands, there was nothing in this rather thin programme to inspire another visit.

There has been a lot of fuss recently about STV's decision to opt out of showing ITV dramas such as The Bill in favour of their own home-grown produce. But if all of their programmes were as good as The Scots Who Fought Franco I doubt anyone would complain.

This fascinating two-part documentary series tells the forgotten story of the 549 young Scots who volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

Committed to fighting fascism wherever it reared its head, a third of these fiery radicals gave their lives out of a humbling sense of ethical duty.

In the early 1990s, director Donald Coutts interviewed several Scottish veterans in order to commemorate their achievements.

Wisely, the story was told primarily in their own words, their vivid recollections proving all the more poignant with the knowledge that they've all since died.

Speaking eloquently and with great candour about their fears, losses and beliefs, they were a genuine inspiration. But why have these remarkable interviews remained on the shelf for so long?