The TV and streaming menu in the 21st century has been loaded with cooking shows, from “Top Chef” to “Hell’s Kitchen” to “Good Eats” to “Cupcake Wars” to “Iron Chef” to “Cooked with Cannibas” to “Is It Cake?” and on and on it goes, and all those chefs and programs owe a debt of historical gratitude to Julia Child, the Babe Ruth—or should we say the Babe Didrikson Zaharias—of the modern television cooking show. Child was not the first woman to have a cooking show on TV, but when she created and hosted “The French Chef” for Boston public television in 1963 and eventually took it nationwide, she revolutionized home cooking for millions of Americans and changed the way we think about food.
Meryl Streep played Child to great effect in the 2009 film “Julie & Julia” and just last year we had the invaluable documentary “Julia,” and of course there’s a treasure trove of archival footage of Child in the TV kitchen—and yet the HBO Max limited bio-series “Julia” feels like a freshly baked, lovingly prepared and deliciously entertaining dish, focusing on the first season of Child’s television show.
