‘The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury Australia’, Mint Pictures’ fourth foray into slow TV, has received rave reviews, with Nine Newspapers describing it as “a mesmerising, indulgent and almost subliminally informative three-hour journey” and News Ltd papers saying it is “a true paddock-to-plate production with a history lesson thrown in for free.”
With the nation in a virtual lockdown due to the corona pandemic, commercial radio networks were salivating ahead of this Saturday evening’s telecast on SBS: “Self-isolating never looked so yum. Most of us are stuck at home at the moment so it’s really exactly what we all need right now.”
Junkee, which described the show as a “masterpiece”, agreed: “Easter stops for no virus, but this year there’ll be a new way to get your chocolate fix while social distancing.”
And the New Daily chimed in with a Q&A: “Have you ever wanted your Easter chocolate to last three hours? Well, happy Easter, that dream comes true this year.”
TV Week took its cue from ‘Charlie & The Chocolate Factory’, saying: “Move over Willy Wonka, this is the real Golden Ticket right here!”
The three-hour TV special is a major deviation from the three previous slow TV shows – ‘The Ghan’, ‘The Indian Pacific’ and ‘The Kimberley Cruise’ – taking viewers from the sugarcane fields of north Queensland to the dairy farms of Tasmania and across Bass Strait to Cadbury’s factory in Melbourne, where millions of chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies are dispatched to market.
It is also the first time slow TV in Australia features an original score. It was composed by Amanda Brown (the violinist from The Go-Betweens) and Caitlin Yeo (who wrote the score for ‘The Pool’, Mint’s two-part series for the ABC in 2019).
‘The Chocolate Factory’ was directed by Adam Kay, and written and produced by Dan Goldberg and Dan Whelan. Cinematography was by Nathan Barlow and Bruno Kataoka. Editing was by Nathan Mulready (offline) and Rob Sarroff (online). Susie Jones was SBS’s commissioning editor.
‘The Chocolate Factory: Inside Cadbury Australia’ will air over the Easter long weekend on SBS on Saturday, April 11 at 7.30pm and encores on Sunday, April 12 on VICELAND at 3.35pm.
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