HBO Max’s ‘Julia’ Serves an Inspiring First Course About Famed Chef Julia Child

Sandra Miska

The rise of the television career of Julia Child, an American chef whose book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” inspired by her time in France, made waves on this side of the Atlantic, is chronicled in HBO Max’s “Julia.” British actress Sarah Lancashire plays the titular character, who first appeared on television during the Kennedy administration, an era when the United States was on the precipice of change.

When we first meet Julia, her husband Paul (David Hyde Pierce) is at the end of his time in the U.S. Foreign Service. The period in which he was stationed in Paris was a high point in their marriage, and it was where Julia studied at the Le Cordon Bleu and linked up with Simone Beck (Isabella Rossellini), the co-author of her book. One year later in 1962, the Childs are living in Cambridge, MA and are in a bit of a rut. Paul is adjusting to a forced early retirement and Julia learns she is going through menopause, which has affected her sex drive. After a successful appearance on a talk show about books hosted by P. Albert Duhamel (Jefferson Mays) in which she does an impromptu demonstration of how to make the perfect French omelet, she pitches her own cooking show to the station, Boston PBS affiliate WGBH. She even fronts her own money from her book royalties, as well as funds she borrowed from her wealthy, perpetually disapproving father (James Cromwell).

While Julia being a go-getter is admirable, she fibs to Paul, telling him WGBH courted her and is footing the bill. Still, the viewers never get the feeling that the stakes are ever that high throughout the whole eight-episode first season. The bond between Julia and Paul, who have no children and come to see the show as their baby, is presented here as being unshakable and is the heart of the series. Lancashire and Hyde Pierce have plenty of sweet scenes as they portray an almost perfect couple, even if their pairing doesn’t make much sense to some, such as Julia’s uptight, conventional father who tells Paul he has “delicate hands” and that he only married Julia for her family money.

The big risk in “Julia” is the cooking show itself, “The French Chef,” as it came about when television was still somewhat of an experimental medium and wasn’t taken seriously by more intellectual types, including Paul in the beginning. Furthermore, the idea of a program about cooking was not considered educational enough for PBS. But the real issue is that “The French Chef” primarily appealed to women, particularly housewives, and men in charge mostly looked at anything liked by that demographic as being frivolous. Fortunately, big boss Hunter Fox (Robert Joy) greenlights Julia’s pilot after his wife makes the delicious dish featured in that first episode, coq au vin (each episode of “Julia” is named after a dish she makes in the show-within-the-show). Julia also has a champion in Alice Naman (Brittany Bradford), a rising young Black female producer who goes above and beyond for the chef. Alice’s superior Russell Morash (Fran Kranz), a youngish white male producer with dreams of producing progressive documentaries, meanwhile, resents being taken off of Duhamel’s show to produce “The French Chef,” and Duhamel looks down his nose at this woman whom he sees as competition. Again, both men see a cooking show as being inferior, but Julia manages to win one of them over to her side.

What “Julia” does best is explore womanhood. Tall and gregarious, Julia is not considered a conventional woman, at least for the early sixties, but she is mostly comfortable in her own skin. She is a role model not only for her entrepreneurial spirit, but also how she inspires others to embrace who they are, such as a gay man she meets in San Francisco who bases his drag persona after her. One person who is not a fan is famed feminist writer Betty Friedan, who is portrayed as a real stick in the mud here. The author of “The Feminine Mystique” tells Julia at a gala that she is being problematic by promoting a style of cooking on her show that would keep wives and mothers chained to their stoves. It is an unfair assessment based on what is portrayed in the show, as we only see Julia uplifting other women, not only Alice, but also her female associates who take pride in and find purpose in working with her, including her editor, Judith Jones (Fiona Glascott), who bails on novelist John Updike to come to her side. There’s also Julia’s widowed best friend Avis DeVoto (Bebe Neuwirth), who finds a new lease on life working on “The French Chef,” as does young mother Dorothy Zinberg (Lindsey Broad), who is inspired to finish her graduate dissertation.

“Julia” sets itself up for a potential second season in the finale by showing Julia Child sign a contract for the second season of “The French Chef” after some back-and-forth, as a major part of her arc in coming to know her worth. And, a chance meeting with a man who we presume to be future PBS star Fred Rogers at the end of episode seven sets up a relationship that will hopefully be explored.

“Julia” premieres March 31 on HBO Max with new episodes streaming on Thursdays.