CHICAGO – Jeff Smith was a frequent and influential TV star. Better known as the Frugal Gourmet, he pioneered the food-on-television stream that is now a raging video river. He was also a husband and father of two sons. He was also accused of being a heavy drinker and monster.
In a five-hour independent documentary series more than five years and 150-some interviews in the making, “I Bid You Peace,” named for Smith’s signature sign-off, gives us a detailed, fascinating and, yes, disturbing portrait of a complicated and reportedly damaged and dangerous man.
He has been dead for two decades, forgotten even longer, but he returns courtesy of writer, director and producer Chris Johnson, a diligent and deep researcher with a fine sense of narrative storytelling who has been working on this series since 2019…