Boiling Point’s smartest decision was to ditch the film’s big gimmick

For the first 10 minutes and 59 seconds of Boiling Point, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were being served last night’s leftovers. The project – a dark, tense drama set in the kitchen of a fine-cuisine restaurant – started out as a 20-minute short, before being adapted into an acclaimed 90-minute feature film, and now, finally, as a four-part BBC series.

In its previous incarnation, Boiling Point had been characterised by its signature visual move: an unbroken “one-shot” take that lasts for the duration of the film. The movie tracked the descent of ace chef Andy (Stephen Graham) as he contends with a fractious workplace environment, a disintegrating family life, and addiction, all over the course of one evening depicted in real time. It was enough to invoke heart palpitations – for both Andy and the viewer.

The BBC series starts out in the same visual style, with the camera gliding around the kitchen set, introducing us to its location and characters: under-the-cosh head chef Carly (Vinette Robinson), fiery sous chef Freeman (Ray Panthaki) and flailing newbie Johnny (Stephen Odubola) among them. So far, so familiar. But then, at the 11-minute mark, we get the opening credits. When the episode resumes, the single-take dogma has been discarded completely. In the time it takes to flash-fry a prawn, Boiling Point jettisoned its main selling point. But it paid off: getting rid of the one-take gimmick is one of the smarter decisions its creators (Graham, writer James Cummings, and director Philip Barantini) could have made.

A one-take sequence – or “oner”, in the argot of film nerds – is often seen as a test of filmmaking craft, a kind of look-ma-no-hands demonstration of framing, blocking and acting assuredness. A long shot takes time; preparation; confidence. Extending this for a film’s entire runtime only augments the accomplishment – or so the reasoning goes. Movies such as the Sam Mendes war epic 1917 and the Oscar Best Picture winner Birdman used digital trickery to create the illusion of a single take, and garnered high praise; others, including Woody Harrelson’s Lost in London and the propulsive German thriller Victoria, managed the feat for real. It’s clear that single-take productions are in vogue right now. But maybe they shouldn’t be. As Boiling Point shows, there’s more to storytelling than keeping the camera rolling.

The original Boiling Point used its single take to foster a sense of immersion, of intensity: you are trapped in the kitchen with Graham’s unravelling chef, and the camera refuses to let you out. That’s the idea, anyway. But committing to a single unbroken shot also hamstrings the ways in which this story can actually be told. In the language of cinema, meaning is created through edits, through cuts. Something like Boiling Point (the film) does not have this at its disposal. It is unable to deploy some of the most fundamental of filmmaking tools – shot/reverse-shots or cross-cutting – and is inevitably shallower as a result.

The fact is, long shots are, like absinthe or improv comedy, best enjoyed in moderation. There’s a reason that most of the filmmakers renowned for their oners – people such as Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, or early antecedents such as Max Ophuls – didn’t try to protract the visual flourish into an entire film. Rather, they are deployed judiciously, with purpose and restraint.

Within minutes of Boiling Point (the TV series) liberating itself from its single-shot prison, the benefits of a traditional approach become apparent. For one thing, it allows for a change of location – bringing Graham’s character, no longer working in the kitchen, back into view – but also allows tension in the restaurant to build up in a different, more precise way. Carly takes a phone call and steps outside; her conversation is intercut with scenes of hurried preparation back in the kitchen. The tension ratchets. The original film had to depict its chaotic goings-on consecutively, like a baton being repeatedly palmed during a relay race. The series, meanwhile, is free to depict everything at once: the clutter and energy of the culinary environment is given its proper due. We see actions, reactions, several things going on at once; Boiling Point is no longer beholden to the practicalities and logistical limitations of one long, stubborn camera movement.

None of this is to diminish the merits of the original film, which endures as a polished and compelling example of knife-edge storytelling. Graham and Robinson are superb in the feature, and no less assured in the TV spin-off. A 90-minute-long take is always going to seem impressive, just because of the sheer work and concentration involved. But art should strive for more than just technical prowess. Thankfully, it seems like Boiling Point has finally discovered the virtue of a cut – and not just cold cuts.

‘Boiling Point’ is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer