It seems that, unlike most of us, TV execs haven’t heard of proverbs or irony. The adage “too many cooks” has passed them by and cooking shows on TV have been allowed to multiply beyond all reason. Eventually, even the weather forecast will be a close-up of a glistening pan-fried quail with a sugar-frosted thermometer up its bum.
Whatever happy, wholesome broth my TV experience used to be is now a bland, barely viscous puddle that’s totally oversaturated with people chasing their food dreams – and I’m starting to feel a little bit sick.
Last week I hoped the net number of chefs on my flatscreen cooking window would decrease. MasterChef – the least offensive of its species – finished, its victor (Billie McKay)decided by a devilishly tricky Heston Blumenthal pressure test that involved 55 steps and a wormhole in space-time through which you had to send ingredients back to your earlier self.
It seemed an arbitrarily technical ending; like having a series of the X Factor where the grand finale requires the contestants to master Tuvan throat singing.
Why, oh why then, with a bit of scheduling space freed up for non-culinary purposes, would the sofa gods blight us all by tossing two more cooking shows into the mix? Worse still, they’re rehashes of existing horrors. “If you enjoyed your steak for main, you’ll love this beef crumble, followed by beef and crackers.”
The Hotplate kicked off on Nine on Tuesday, a show no doubt created to answer the question, “What would My Kitchen Rules’ Pete and Manu look like if they were hollowed out and two other presenters wore their skins?” Look carefully and in between courses you can actually see judge Scott Pickett readjusting his Manu flesh outfit. It’s not just the hosts and their mannerisms: the entire show appears to be the MKR format grafted onto a different channel. Little surprise then that Seven is suing Nine in what’s likely to be the most depressing legal battle of our time.
In fact they should turn that into a reality series, Networks Got No Talent. A row of TV execs would pitch their near-identical shows to a panel of judges, who then decide who’s guilty of ripping the others off. First prize is the right to boast that at least your aggravatingly naff reality TV idea wasn’t stolen.
The point is, just avoid copying MKR. Not for fear of legal repercussions, but because MKR is awful and you’ve effectively just doubled the amount of a bad thing.
To complicate things further, Seven has also sought to replace MKR with a vague copy on its own channel . Restaurant Revolution lives up to the first half of its name, but as to the second? Well, it all feels eerily familiar. If The Hotplate is doing a Hannibal Lecter by wearing another show’s face, then with its stitched together elements of Shark Tank, The Block, and MKR, Restaurant Revolution is definitely Leatherface.
Ultimately, the end result of the networks carving each other’s (and their own) shows up out of a psychopathic dedication to unoriginality is that if you’re allergic to reality cooking shows, currently your television is best avoided altogether.
