"ITS BLAND AND UNENTERTAINING, IT LACKS PERSONALITY AND QUITE FRANKLY IM NOT IMPRESSED. I WOULDN'T WATCH THIS ON TELEVISION MATE, I REALLY WOULDN'T".
That was for anyone that had ever wondered what it would be like if the hosts of Master Chef reviewed their own show. They are big shouty nightmares, with all the charisma of wet lettuce, a fact that the pair of them make up for with big collars and swearing at sandwiches. I mean they don't actually swear but you can see they want to. They're so bold and brash, cookery shows are an almost theraputic observation of cooking, a visual enjoyment of food that makes me think "yeah, I'm gonna make that, I'm hungry".
Instead, Master Chef has two presenters bereft of any class or style and a female narrator who talks like people do when they suddenly touch something cold. She describes the food about as passionately as filling in a tax return, opting instead for a hollow and clinical description of exactly what the food contains, in what must be a misguided aim at 'food with status' e.g. Damian has constructed a futon of spinach for his north-atlantic lemon drizzled oxford educated salmon. It's all just crap.
And then of course Idiot 1 & Idiot 2 shout at the "contestant" and at the each other...I mean, contestant cookery shows shouldn't have contestants, cooking isn't competitive, it's an art!
Gordon Ramsey shouts, be it just seems less like a character defect; he is aware that he is shouting. The presenters on Master Chef seem like the kind of guys you would want to punch in the face at a bus stop. "WHERE'S THE BLOODY BUS, I HAVE A BIG APPOINTMENT WITH THE QUEEN" one of them explodes at no one at all. They are both incredibly detestable and this is not what cookery shows should be - but it gets worse.
Iron Chef is on it's way to England. Its presenter is a wine expert that you may have seen on Saturday Kitchen and he is something of an eccentric, a blow-hard with a taste for big words and pulling big faces. "AHA, to our main contestants who stand, poised and ready to fight in a battle of cooking prowess, titans of the kitchen, who will emerge victorious, etc, etc"...so, as if this farcical presenter for Iron Chef UK wasn't enough, here is the show itself.
Iron Chef is quintessentially American. They took your common cookery show and turned it into a Die Hard film. It has a samurai or ninja guy or something who adds a lot of tacky pseudo asian pazzazz to the affair. Then, in front of a huge studio audience, contestants cook UNDER A TIME LIMIT (oh because that's what cooking should be like) intensley and competitively. Then, and this is the worst bit, hundreds and thousands of graphics, explosions, sound-effects, literally slow-mo action replays of chopping vegetables, are all thrown into the mix and left to simmer; less a stew, more a stewpid.
Why Channel 4 thought this was a good idea is beyond me, but the British public won't go for this, unless I have under-estimated them. Come Dine With me is more our style. Like Master Chef, Iron Chef Uk is and will be a completely charmless stab at what producers think people want as they desperately try and find somewhere else to go in the world of television. Unnecessary fanfare and shouting are not it - that's why we don't all love the Go Compare Advert...we really fucking hate it and we mute it or turn it off. What next, strapping fireworks to the letters and attaching the clock to a huge time-bomb in Countdown? Please.
Although Countdown could do with a younger, hipper demographic. It needs to appeal to todays younger, more blood-thirsty word puzzlers. Oh and can we get Jeff Stelling to ride a skateboard? Get my pyrotechnic guy on the phone, let's a put a rocket up this mother! WOOSH!
