‘I’m Eva Longoria and I’m a SERIOUS Francophile!” So begins each instalment of the actor’s Gallic travelogue. France, says Longoria, “is my home away from home”, although she’s usually in the country for work, rather than to experience its abundance of “joie de vivre”. (She does, she notes, have some extracurricular experience with the French, having previously been married to the French-American basketball player Tony Parker for three years.) Now, though, she is on her own adventure, having returned to l’Hexagone for something “deeper”. Cut to a clip of our intrepid guide in a vineyard, getting acquainted with cabernet sauvignon grapes (“That’s my favourite!” she whispers animatedly), before we segue to her floating gracefully past the Eiffel Tower.
Eva Longoria: Searching for France follows the equally alarmist-sounding Eva Longoria: Searching for Spain, and sets up the exciting possibility of an extended Longoria televisual universe, where the Desperate Housewives star makes her way across the entire globe (Eva Longoria: Searching for Equatorial Guinea, anyone?). It’s all been done before on television, of course, but the passion and lightness of touch here make it an endearing proposition.
Take the opening scene, as Longoria orders a baguette in a Parisian bakery, in French, only to be immediately addressed in English – an experience that even the most SERIOUS Francophiles must contend with. She is unfazed, concentrating on the “full sensory experience” of the bread, “from the smell, to the colour, to the crunch, to the warmth, to the taste”. It’s a little bit Stanley Tucci, then (he was the original Searching for … host, with Searching for Italy in 2021). And it’s definitely a little bit Emily in Paris.
There’s a soupçon of French history laced through its eight episodes, though never enough for the programme to feel dry. An extravagant meal with the Michelin-hoarding chef Alain Ducasse and the US-born, Paris-based journalist Lindsey Tramuta leads to a gentle conversation about the origins of haute cuisine in the court of Louis XIV at Versailles. We also learn that the bohemian Belleville neighbourhood has strong working-class roots – stemming from the 1871 Paris Commune revolt. Longoria has lunch with Josephine Baker’s son, Brian, who gives a potted history of her life as an entertainer and resistance spy. But trivia is kept to a minimum: this is Searching for France, after all, not Searching for a PhD in French History. Plus, Longoria’s got important business to attend to, such as eating a delicious-looking take on the croque madame, lovingly crafted by the Filipino-Australian chef Hanz Gueco. (“I thought it was a croque madame because the egg was a boob,” offers Longoria, lowering the tone of Gueco’s establishment.)
A few minutes later, Longoria is threatening to lick her pomme puree off the plate at a fancy restaurant (Eva, non!). It’s a joke, of course, but there is definitely a sense that our permanently blowdried host plays up her fish-out-of-water qualities – and eating rich and saucy meals in white cardigans and dresses is surely asking for trouble. She’s chic, she’s elegant … she’s dangerously close to ruining her outfit with bouillabaisse in Provence. Forget The Traitors: this is truly tense TV.
Really, though, Searching for France is a lovely series, unapologetically frivolous and filled with the finer things in life (Champagne! Caviar! Oysters! A whole pound of butter in the pomme puree, which shocks and excites Longoria in equal measure). It also serves as a PR-friendly showcase for some of the country’s buzziest restaurants, not least Mory Sacko’s MoSuke, where west African and Japanese cuisine are fused daringly. It occasionally decides to warm our hearts, too – see episode two, when Longoria visits a social enterprise-slash-restaurant in Marseille, which employs staff with disabilities and offers three-course meals to customers regardless of their budgets. Like Tucci, Longoria radiates easy charm, and – while she isn’t fluent – makes a big effort to conduct her interviews in French. It’s no easy feat, especially in an increasingly anglophone Paris where French conversation can feel more like ritual humiliation.
It isn’t exactly meaty stuff, but maybe it doesn’t have to be? What’s more important anyway: learning about the various violent deaths of French kings and queens, or knowing how to make the perfect niçoise salad? Understanding the finer points of Haussmannian architecture, or finding out where to get a slap-up steak tartare? I know what I’ll find seriously useful on my next trip.
• Eva Longoria: Searching for France aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
