The cooking show is as old as television itself. Yet why do we like watching the making of a meal that most of us will never cook, let alone eat? In this jam-packed video essay, Dirty Furniture takes you on a rollercoaster ride through the history of a genre that is at once a staple of television viewing and a hot pot of shifting perspectives and sociocultural values.

A film by Dirty Furniture.

Directed by: Anna Bates and Elizabeth Glickfeld 

Edited by: Wendy Short

Research by: Rosalita Baldassin, Lara Machado, Ruth Mitchell and Carmel Wilkinson-Ayre 

Additional research by: Misato Ehara, Pin-Chieh Pan and Fumiko Yamazaki

Dirty Furniture is the critically acclaimed magazine edited by Anna Bates and Elizabeth Glickfeld that considers design from the perspective of use. Each issue takes a piece of furniture as its theme to explore topics spanning design, politics, history, technology, psychology...and the plain weird. Following issues on the couch, table, toilet and closet, the fifth in the series of six issues, on the phone, will launch in early 2021.