That whole north stretch of Wales is one of my favourites places in the UK, Caernarfon is just around the corner and also boasts a stunning castle.

I can't speak for yourself, but I'd wager the large majority of people who eat bacon don't even know what part of the pig it comes from unless its specifically listed, let alone be able to distinguish whether it is infact the correct cut.

My point was more that you can't say American bacon is always belly, because there's always the chance that it isn't. The sort of food they slipped horsemeat into isn't the sort I'd go near, but the bottom line is, companies selling/producing food are as prone to cutting corners as any other.

Good point, pancetta over here is usually unsmoked, just cured, like guanciale (although in the UK bacon is available smoked or unsmoked)

I'd recommend avoiding absolutes when it comes to food, turns out some of us were eating horse meat for quite awhile over here and I doubt the US food standards are much better than ours.

I'm certainly no expert in these things, but my basic understanding is pancetta is closer to guanciale in taste, texture and fat than normal bacon, but I'd imagine normal bacon is fine provided it's not ridiculously thinny sliced and cut into chunks. I'm from the UK but from what I've heard, American bacon would probably work better than our bacon as its usually belly, not loin.

Credit for the recipe goes to Vincenzo's Plate from the YT channel of the same name, I believe he's done various Carbonara recipes, I've tried them all, along with many others, but this one always seems to give consistantly the best results (though if someone knows a better one, I'm always in the market for even nicer Carbonara)

I'd highly recommend the recipe I've started using which comes out looking similiar to this and tastes amazing; for 3 people;

• 210g spaghetti (plenty of salt in the water it's cooked in)
• pancetta (unless you're lucky enough to be able to buy guanciale locally)
• 3 egg yolk, 1 whole egg
• 120g+ of pecorino (parmigiano does work, but pecorino is better. You need at least 1/2 the amount of cheese vs pasta, the more the better)
• A load of fresh black pepper

I add my cooked pasta to the pan I cooked the pancetta in, add a little pasta water (you'll get the hang of how much, roughly 2-3 table spoons I guess), take off the heat and mix in the egg/cheese/pepper thoroughly and you'll get deliciously thick creamy sauce.

I think you're massively underestimating just how much Tolkein fans hated RoP, not to mention how many "normies" could recognise that even at a basic level, the show failed. The fact anyone even bothered watching it and doing reviews does suggest that the LotR franchise is still up there near the top and it'll take more than one piss weak season of TV to change that.

Ignoring the obvious metrics, one of the aims of RoP was to become a water cooler show, the issue is, no one wants to talk about it because it's just not that good.

As for press and data - Do you really trust mainstream reviewers and press writers? They will literally praise a pile of doggy poo if the company that made it is big enough to give them perks or future business. Regarding data - streaming metrics are highly prone to manipulation, keep in mind minutes watched is one such and if an embedded video on prime starts playing, you bet thats counting towards that figure.