TV Matters

Ideally, a television commissioner should be like a chef, sourcing the freshest and newest ingredients to appeal to tastes we don't yet know we have. But, in a medium with limitless space to fill but increasingly limited budgets, the more relevant kitchen metaphor is the short-order cook at a motorway service station, yawningly reheating familiar favorites. And, fittingly but depressingly, the comparison especially applies to cookery shows, which this summer are multiplying like bacteria on an abandoned plate of meat.

Stuart Jeffries has already warned against Eating With the Enemy (BBC2), a stale micro-waving of Dragons' Den blanded with MasterChef, in which professional critics diss the dishes of amateur chefs. But, alarmingly, that show only represents half of the culinary disasters premiered by the BBC this week.

Step Up to the Plate (BBC1), running daily after lunch, is one of those series that carries like a facial scar the evidence of the meeting at which it was pitched. Staring admiringly at the ratings history of MasterChef and Strictly Come Dancing, executives decided to throw half of each into a bowl and mix.

So Anton Du Beke from the hoofing franchise presides over a kitchen contest format in which the chief judge is Loyd Grossman, the granddaddy of foodie viewing. But the format-raiders have failed to appreciate that the key to Strictly Come Dancing is that the full-time dancers and the part-timers are paired rather than opposed. The reason for this is that professionals will almost inevitably beat civilians.

Step Up to the Plate stages a fight between people who run homes and people who own restaurants, with the latter apparently encouraged to belittle the former in reality TV's favored gladiatorial fashion.

The reason that we're getting so many cookery programs is that audiences have demonstrated a proven appetite for them. But hunger can be over-fed. And, with these shows, our diet of culinary contests reaches the sick-bag stage.