‘The Golden Spurtle’ review: Nourishing doc on a Scottish porridge-making championship

Dir/scr: Constantine Costi. UK/Australia. 2025. 75mins

There are just three ingredients required to make a perfect bowl of porridge: oats, water and salt. What makes the difference between a run-of-the-mill bowl of beige slop and a top-tier offering with a chance of carrying off the Golden Spurtle – the coveted top prize of the annual porridge-making competition held in the Scottish highland village of Carrbridge – is a subject of heated debate, and of this delightful documentary.

A deftly constructed crowd-pleaser with real breakout potential

The ingredient list in Constantine Costi’s film is similarly stripped back, its considerable charm and humour comes from an appetising combination of lovably eccentric characters, a sharp-eyed camera, a playful, bustling score and the glorious Scottish countryside. But like a hearty bowl of oat-based breakfast goodness, this is a film that will leave you with a lasting glow.

This feature represents something of an unexpected career tangent for Greek-Cypriot-Australian director Costi. A multi-award-winning librettist and director, his work to date has mainly been in the world of opera including the forthcoming ’Siegfried And Roy: The Unauthorised Opera’ for Sydney Festival. Costi also previously directed the 2020 mid-length opera film, A Delicate Fire. The Golden Spurtle, which feels closer to the artistry and affectionate observational humour of the BBC Modern Times documentary series than it does to the heightened drama of opera, may be a departure for Costi, but is a deftly constructed crowd-pleaser with real breakout potential.

The film is blessed with a wealth of colourful characters, but taking centre stage is Charlie Miller, head of the Porridge Committee and the chief organiser of the annual championship. A staunch character with a laconic, unflappable manner, Charlie’s passion for oatmeal runs deceptively deep. In his spare time, Charlie makes and sells spurtles (the traditional porridge-stirring baton) to help finance the competition. But Charlie’s health is failing and he has decided to step down from his porridge competition duties. The 2023 competition documented here will be his final year at the helm.

Competitors include a former two-time champion looking to reclaim her crown; a likeable Australian taco chef; a terrifyingly intense health company CEO who has radical ideas about the proportion of pinhead to normal oats in his recipe; a hipster porridge fan who brings his grandmother’s stirring secret to the pot; and an irascible local man, also a former winner, who is convinced that the spurtle is his to lose this year. While many of the competitors guard their techniques and recipes jealously, others generously share tips – we learn, for example, that stirring the porridge the wrong way (anticlockwise) will let the devil in. Most of the serious competitors, who come from as far afield as Zimbabwe, the Netherlands and the USA, are porridge traditionalists. But Charlie recalls, with a horrified chuckle, the infamous year when one entrant requested a deep fat fryer as part of their cooking equipment.

Costi has fun with the framing of his characters – Charlie, burly, bespectacled and serious, is frequently shot peering out of tight little windows. Another character, a local legend for her washing-up services, trundles into the frame on a ride-on mower. But the unstaged impeccable comic timing of the conversations and to-camera statements comes naturally.

Ultimately, it becomes clear that the actual competition is almost beside the point (although the inclusion of a whiskey-tasting element during the event adds spice and ensures that all the key food groups are covered). The main focus of the picture is getting to know the people of Carrbridge, in this affectionate celebration of a community and a small town that decided to put itself on the map, with porridge. A film to nourish the soul.