TV Talk: Very Local highlights Pittsburgh chefs; PBS offers a biography of Benjamin Franklin

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers viewing tips for the coming week.

The latest Pittsburgh show on Hearst’s Very Local streaming service, available via Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Android TV and Roku devices, offers profiles of several Pittsburgh chefs in each half-hour episode.

Unlike Very Local’s hosted culinary competition, “Plate It, Pittsburgh,” “What’s on the Menu?” is more of a docu-series. There’s no host, just Western Pennsylvania chefs talking about their cooking, their history and their relationship to the community they serve.

The six-episode first season, streaming a new episode each Thursday starting April 7, features these chefs/establishments, per Very Local:

April 7, “Global Flavors”

• Dalel Khalil of Khalil’s in Bloomfield

• Kulwant Pabla of People’s Indian in Garfield

• Grace Mrema of Kilamanjaro Flavour in Shaler

• Keyla Nogueira of Casa Brasil in Highland Park

April 14, “Vegan”

• Jennie Canning of ShadoBeni on the North Side

• Brooks Criswell of Onion Maiden in Allentown

• Reed Putlitz of REED&CO in Lawrenceville

• Kate Lasky and Tomasz Skowronski of Apteka in Bloomfield

April 28, “Sweet Tooth”

• Nancy B’s in Homestead

• La Gourmandine in Mt. Lebanon, Lawrenceville, Hazelwood and Downtown Pittsburgh

• Galen Moorer of Happy Day Dessert Factory on the North Side

• Bethel Bakery in Bethel Park and North Strabane

May 5, “Farm to Table”

• Dave Mahaney of Scratch & Co. in Troy Hill

• Lucretia Mcgee of Everything Juices in Bethel Park

• Jess Gibson of Altius on Mt. Washington

• Jeremy Swartzfager of Footprints Farm in Gibbon Glade

• Beau Mitall of Alberta’s Pizza food truck

• Steve Janoski of Janoski’s Farm in Clinton

May 12, “Pittsburgh Staples”

• Max’s Allegheny Tavern on the North Side

• Gary Burdick of Big Jim’s in Lower Greenfield

• Helen Mannarino of Pierogis Plus in McKees Rocks

• Lakeisha Brown of Salem’s Market Grill in the Strip District

May 19, “Food Trucks”

• Jordan Robarge of Revival Chili

• John Barr of Haskles Deli

• Jesus Martinez of La Palapa

• Kit Durrett of Soul Biscuit

‘Benjamin Franklin’

PBS’s latest Ken Burns documentary series, “Benjamin Franklin” (8-10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, WQED-TV), features Mandy Patinkin as the voice of Franklin, who biographer Walter Isaacson calls “the most approachable” of the Founding Fathers.

“He’s the founder who is made of flesh, not made of marble,” Isaacson said during a PBS press conference in January during the Television Critics Association virtual winter press tour. “The importance of Ben Franklin is that he was able to connect art and science, able to connect the humanities and the technology. He cared about everything you could possibly learn about anything, from art to anatomy to math to music to diplomacy. And his science helped inform the things that he did. By being an expert in Newton, he understood checks and balances and balances of power. His electricity experiments are the most important scientific achievements of that period, right after Newton. And I do think by being a Renaissance man, like a Leonardo da Vinci, he’s able to see the patterns in nature.”

“Benjamin Franklin” explores the reluctant revolutionary’s contradictions: He owned slaves but became an abolitionist. He had little formal education but became an inventor and someone whose wisdom others sought out.

“I consider getting to be his voice for those sessions when we recorded it one of the privileges of my artistic life,” Patinkin said. “(Ken Burns) gives us this story of a human being. I tell you, I heard that Michael Douglas is getting to play Benjamin Franklin in a film — and I have never been jealous of any of my fellow actors my whole life and I love Michael Douglas — and I’m completely jealous that he’s getting this opportunity.”