It's back. One of the few fun shows for all the family where there is 90% probability that any given person appearing on screen is an irredeemable prick.
Last year I really enjoyed my weekly review, pointing out my favourite dishes, who was the biggest prick, the judges comments, any drama caused by pricks, the winners and losers, and the least prickish prick*.
*There are very few genuinely sympathetic contestants, so it's not a
question of someone being nice, just noticeably less prickish than the
others
I still love the show, but from what I've seen in this first week I fear I would largely be repeating myself if I were to do the same thing again.
So the brief this year is for the chefs to create dishes that celebrate the veterans of D-Day, evoking a patriotic, 40's wartime spirit. OK. Sure. So far, so typical GBM. But if there was one thing we learnt from last year when the brief was to make 'comedy' food, it's that chefs Do. Not. Get. Tone. And telling a group of (how to put it?) pricks with no sense of tone to make something vaguely to do with war, seems pretty dicey to me. Example: last week, dull-eyed madman Ray made a starter of pigeon (homing pigeons, geddit?) with a note clutched in its claw (so clever!) that read something like 'Beach taken, casualties light'. And it went down a storm. They loved it. Does no one else find that unutterably tacky? To serve this to veterans, who may have used actual homing pigeons and who definitely saw actual casualties, no one else finds this kind of off? No one thinks that making the actual war that actually happened and people actually died in the 'theme' for a meal is a bit disrespectful? Yes, celebrate the veterans, sure, and good job too, but I can't see how making a dish based on someone's harrowing experiences is really the best way to celebrate them.
And that's before we even get to the dick swinging. Oh, lord, the dick swinging. I was obviously braced for it (overly aggressive competitiveness is, after all, a large part of the prickish sensibility), but factor in the brief and we've got whole new opportunities for self-aggrandisement. 'I'm doing it for the veterans', they say 'I really want to win this to honour their sacrifice'. The implicit meaning that these other chefs, they might just want to win for themselves, not like me, I want to win for the heroes, and doesn't that kind of make me a hero too? I might not mind it so much if it didn't so clearly reek of insincerity. But they aren't actors. They're chefs. And chefs Don't. Get. Tone.
There are still a lot of great things. Last week Tom Kerridge was delightfully encouraging and Marcus Wareing delightfully menacing. Despite some people's best endeavours, the cooking still looks inventive and fun. And my absolute favourite aspect of the show - the editing - is still provocatively incoherent. Any laughter is cut, making it look like no one can take a joke ever, and every sentence is met with a full minute of scowling. In the episode from Friday a shot of one chef climbing a hill in his hometown was immediately followed by a shot of the other chef arriving at the kitchen, giving the impression that they were both on their way to the studio but one took a wildly divergent route and got lost in the countryside. It was so weird that I got the giggles, and then I couldn't drink my wine because my hand was shaking from laughter, and then the fact that I was laughing at something so bizarre made me laugh even harder and I started to cry a bit and had to put my glass down. And then Pete was sitting next to me with such a weary yet patient expression waiting for me to explain why I was laughing for seemingly no reason at all that I got even worse and had a bit of a meltdown. It was the editing, Pete. The editing.
So this year I'm leaving all that behind. I'll watch it, and no doubt shout at the TV, but there's only so many times I can write 'But they're all such pricks!'. It's a lot, but there's a limit.
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