Bill (Alec Gillis) and Karen (Carly Pope) are shopping channel cooks whose job is to showcase exciting new kitchen tools. It definitely always goes well. Definitely.

Cooking With Bill proves that this release format is far from perfect. There are four episodes here with the exact same format: Bill and Karen showcase a new device. Either something terrible happens to them or they eat something horrible. The end. By themselves, and run at the end of one of the longer movies, these are mildly amusing. There’s also a hint of something worse going on, with both Gillis and Pope doing a good job of communicating the hostage video terror of the two chirpy hosts.

But that’s a reach even I am reluctant to make because the bottom line is these just aren’t very good. Gillis and Pope work fine but Blomkamp’s love of gore is the only thing going on here and it tips over from a feature to a gristly, bile covered bug. I have a couple of very particular food responses that make me nauseous. An episode of Cooking with Bill, 24 hours later, is still giving me a little of that. If there was more to it than ‘Ewww, Gross!’ I’d be more forgiving but there isn’t, so I’m not. Of the first batch of OATS, this one is eminently skippable.

The next episodic instalment (see our review of the third story here) is a desperately needed step away from the gore and into something approaching a plot. The two episodes of God, ‘Serengeti’ and ‘Chicago’, cast Blomkamp frequent fliers Sharlto Copley and Jason Cope as God and his butler, Geoffrey. Using precise, and very impressive, effects we see the pair of them mess with the world as represented by a large table in front in what seems to be God’s gentleman’s club. The devastation they wreak is miniature in scale but global in scope and Copley is excellent as a God who wouldn’t seem out of place in Exploding Kittens. Cope is who you remember who, and the second story here especially gives some weight to proceedings I’d love to see explored in more detail. Plus, at last, the gore is minimal and the sense of relief and shfit in tone is incredibly welcome.

Verdict: Insubstantial as so many of these are, but fun where Cooking with Bill is anything but.

Cooking with Bill: 2/10

God: 7/10

Alasdair Stuart