Masterchef Goes Large

Synopsis

Reality remake of Masterchef. Each day six cooks battle it out over a series of culinary challenges whilst under the added pressure of zoo-style camerawork and thumping dance beats. The six are whittled down to three in a Ready Steady Cook use-these-ingredients-and-make-something-quickly style challenge ("The Invention Test"). Whichever three the two judges deem the worst go home; the winners stay overnight for two more challenges - working a shift in a professional kitchen ("The Pressure Test") and preparing their best two-course meal ("The (er) Final Test").

The winner of each heat goes through to the Friday quarter-final. In this, the four would-be chefs must face a name-the-ingredients quiz and must deliver a speech to the judges outlining why they deserve to win. One contestant is sent home without having cooked anything, and the remaining three must cook their very best three-course meal (yes, even better than that two-course meal in the heat that was their very best). The winners of this go through to the semi-finals and then hopefully the grand final, with the chance of being taken on as a proper chef. From the second series onwards, the last week of the heats is a "comeback" week in which knocked-out contestants from the previous year return for another shot at the title. The format is slightly different during this week, lacking the invention test but with the contestants facing a longer pressure test consisting of both a breakfast and dinner service on the same day. In the final stages, the contestants must cook under various (some would say novelty) conditions - in a ship's galley, for a wedding party, in the jungles of Belize, in a catering-van for the cast and crew of "Waterloo Road" or "Ashes To Ashes", at a Michelin-starred restaurant, backstage for The Corrs, and so on. The winner is crowned The Winner, and goes off to enjoy their new-found job.

For a cookery show in which nine dishes are made every day, there's surprisingly little emphasis placed on the cooking, the producers evidently preferring the judges' deliberations, cogitations and digestion, and shots of the winners calling their friends and family on their mobiles. Nevertheless, it's a pretty entertaining half-hour, and let's face it: what's the alternative? Hollyoaks?

Celebrity Masterchef

Inevitably, BBC1 gets the all-star variant. First broadcast in September 2006, the celeb version features 24 participants, most of whom we've heard of, at least vaguely, and one (yes, as many as one) of whom is actually famous enough to be listed in Who's Who. Take that, Love Island! The second celebrity series actually managed to attract an earth-shattering three Who's Who entrants (Gunnell, Rippon and Quirke), which we're guessing may be some sort of record.

Unusually for a celeb show, it's all pre-recorded, with no telephone voting, not even a Great British Menu-type poll at the end. The format is basically the same as the regular show, except that only three celebs begin each heat and there is no elimination after the first test. Also, in the quarter finals, the four celebs do not have to do the ingredients test or make a case for staying in the contest to John and Gregg. Instead, they all have to cook the same classic dish (Chicken Kiev or steak and chips, to give but two examples) and the celeb who produces the least successful version is eliminated. (The 'Classic Recipe' test is also frequently used during the final stages of the regular series and during the early stages of the Professionals version).

Masterchef: The Professionals

Back on BBC Two, a further spin-off saw young professionals take on the Masterchef challenge. No John Torode in this one, for he has no Michelin stars so what does he know? Instead Michel Roux Jr (what, just the two stars?) joined Gregg Wallace in the studio. Three contestants featured in each heat, facing two rounds: the Versatility Test (create two different dishes using the same principal ingredient) and the Classic Recipe Test (make two courses based on recipes provided, but do it in your own style). The weekly finals were cook-for-the-critics rounds, with two from four advancing to the final phase.

Notably, and in stark contrast to the amateur and celebrity series, the realities of the industry are reflected in the gender balance of the contestants, with very few female chefs taking part (although it should be noted that, in the second series, while there were only 4 female contestants, one of them, Marianne, who frequently cooked for celebrities, very impressively made it to the final stages). Without the ability to characterise the contestants with lazy monickers such as "experimental cook Judy" or "classic cook Kevin", the programme spends a lot of time profiling each contestant, since they all have the same wet-look haircut, northern accent, trendy roll-up set of fierce looking knives and determination to burn exactly three sides of a crouton. As such, there's only the two rounds, the breath of fresh air that was the Pro Kitchen round being sadly missing.

Otherwise, the show is as entertaining as ever, and Roux Jr certainly has his moments. His manner may be considerably quieter and less in-your-face than either John or Gregg (which, frankly, can't be difficult!), but his criticisms are, if anything, even more cutting. As well as picking up on minor details such as the wrong choice of plate and removing tiny sprigs of mint leaf atop a dish, his reactions vary from "That's good enough to be served in my restaurant" and "I could eat a whole plateful of this - no, I could eat two platefuls!" to "Have you considered doing something other than cooking food?" He also likened the sauce on one dish to something he might see on the pavement outside a pub - and he gave another contestant short shrift for 'chatting back'! Even the 2008 champion, Derek Johnstone, did not entirely escape criticism from Roux, especially when the shortbread biscuits that he presented as part of one dessert were not up to scratch. "You're Scottish, so you should know how to produce proper shortbread biscuits!" was Roux's opinion. Bottom lips have trembled on more than one occasion.

We note that Gregg and Michel only ever refer to the programme as "Professional Masterchef", suggesting that the title (an obvious crib from the successful University Challenge spin-off) may have been changed at a late stage, i.e. after the show was in the can. Probably the change was to make it "EPG friendly", so that Sky viewers would see "Masterchef: Th...", not "Professional M..."

The second series (2009) saw a slight tweak to the heats, with four contestants starting each heat, one being eliminated after the, er, "Elimination Test". This sees each contestant in turn having ten minutes to complete two tasks: a preparation task (spatchcock a chicken, trim an artichoke) and a simple (ha!) cooking task, usually making a sauce of some kind, or possibly something definitely simpler (in theory, anyway), like making scrambled eggs or an omelette. For this test, Michel is absent and his sous chef Monica Galleti joins Gregg to intimidate and judge the contestants. This is sold to the viewer as the contestants having to earn the right to cook for Michel, though it looks suspiciously as if Shine are looking to pitch a Monica Galleti series a few months down the line (good though it is to have some fresh blood in the series). It's actually quite amazing to see how many supposedly professional contestants make a complete hash of this test, often failing even to complete it. As Gregg once put it, "I'm not gonna put anybody through to cook for Michel who can't cook a squid [and] doesn't know what a sauce vierge is — unless there's somebody worse than them." We think he was trying to make Monica laugh (and she almost did!) but it does often come down to that sort of judgement. The addition of this test means each episode expands to 45 minutes, which fits rather awkwardly into the BBC Two schedules. In fact they had to resort to lopping 15 minutes off the end of the first heat each week and sticking it at the start of the second to make up a half-hour and an hour respectively. And filling up 15-minute gaps with extracts from Coast. Honestly, we've seen them all already.

Like Michel, Monica invariably comes out with some memorably cutting comments regarding the chefs' prowess (or lack of it), such as, "If you were in my kitchen, you'd be wearing that fish by now!" "If you presented that to Michel, he'd lose the plot completely!" or, more simply, "You've failed that completely!". In addition, she curtly informed one chef who had only scraped through, "You're only still here because another contestant nearly poisoned me - you really need to up your game!" She's also the doyen of facial expressions, which helps the editing no end as it means the progress of the tasks can more or less be reduced to a series of cuts between what the contestant is doing, and reaction shots of Monica displaying surprise, apprehension, delight, dismay, concern, amusement, bemusement, encouragement, discouragement, sheer terror, or any of a million other possible emotions. Forgive us the cliché, but how else can we put it? Monica's facial expressions rock.

Participants

All in Celebrity Masterchef:

2006: Graeme Le Saux, Hardeep Singh Kohli, Richard Arnold, Sarah Cawood, Linda Barker, Charlie Dimmock, Fred MacAulay, Paul Young, Sheila Ferguson, David Grant, Marie Helvin, Lady Isabella Hervey, Tony Hadley, Toyah Willcox, Jilly Goolden, Matt Dawson, Roger Black, Helen Lederer, Sue Perkins, Rowland Rivron, Arabella Weir, Simon Grant, Kristian Digby.

2007: Emma Forbes, Sally Gunnell, Martin Hancock, Sue Cook, Jeff Green, Nadia Sawalha, Jeremy Edwards, Lorne Spicer, Matthew Wright, Darren Bennett, Chris Bisson, Angela Rippon, Chris Hollins, Matt James, Pauline Quirke, Rani Price, Craig Revel Horwood, Phil Tufnell, Gemma Atkinson, Robbie Earle, Midge Ure, Mark Foster, Sherrie Hewson, Sunetra Sarker.

2008: Kaye Adams, Ninia Benjamin, Michael Buerk, Julia Bradbury, Andrew Castle, Josie D'Arby, Louis Emerick, Denise Lewis, Clare Grogan, Liz McClarnon, Joe McGann, Vicki Michelle, Mark Moraghan, Christopher Parker, Andi Peters, Wendi Peters, Steven Pinder, Claire Richards, Linda Robson, Hywel Simons, DJ Spoony, Debra Stephenson, Noel Whelan, Sean Wilson.

2009: Stephen Amos, Linda Barker, Ninia Benjamin, Gemma Bissix, Ian Bleasdale, Rosie Boycott, Janet Ellis, Jeff Green, Shobna Gulati, Tony Hadley, Martin Hancock, Marie Helvin, Helen Lederer, Jan Leeming, Saira Khan, Sian Lloyd, Paul Martin, Joe McGann, Jayne Middlemiss, Brian Moore, Colin Murray, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Michael Obioro, Deena Payne, Wendi Peters, Steven Pinder, Claire Richards, Rowland Rivron, Shirley Robertson, Joel Ross, Simon Shepherd, Joe Swift, Dennis Taylor, Iwan Thomas, Pete Waterman, Rav Wilding.

Key moments

When someone puts a risotto with a piece of meat. Especially people on the second series who presumably saw it happen every week in the first run. Altogether now: "risotto is a dish in itself!"

Gregg is a major pudding fan (hence his Twitter account, @PuddingFace) and has come out with some memorable comments relating to some of the dishes that he's been served, such as when he likened one contestant's dessert to "a Jammie Dodger that's been run over by a steamroller" and at least one other occasion when he so loved the dessert that he declared, "I'd just like to take me shirt off and dive in there!" - not perhaps an image that many of us would like to contemplate. In addition, John and Gregg have often made their judgements in relation to how well they would receive the food if it were served to them in a restaurant. John once told a contestant, "If I were served this in a restaurant, I wouldn't send it back, but I'd probably ask for the service charge to be taken off," while one of Gregg's comments was, "If I were served this in a restaurant, I'd eat it quite happily, but I wouldn't come back tomorrow and order it again."

The food critics have also come out with some memorable comments: these have included Jay Rayner's judgement on a dessert produced by a 2008 finallist: "It looks like a fancy display in a garden centre - I'd rather barbecue my own tongue than eat that!" However, in the 2008 Celebrity series, Andi Peters earned praise from Kate Spicer when he made white chocolate mousse for the critics - Spicer described it as "really quite sexy."

Gregg Wallace's masterclass in contradicting your own hyperbole:
"Cooking does not get tougher than this!" - opening titles to Celebrity Masterchef, 2006
"This competition just gets tougher!" - opening titles to Masterchef Goes Large, 2007

For the 2008 series he went back to a differently-stressed version, "Cooking doesn't get tougher than this!" with a heavy emphasis on the "doesn't". The same clip was used for the 2009 series. For The Professionals series India Fisher, whose scriptwriter must surely be goading us by this point, squeezed out one extra level of superlative with "Cooking doesn't get better than this!". Unfortunately, the editor seems to have a penchant for preceding this line with clips of Michel complaining that a dish is inedible, making "cooking doesn't get better than this" less a promise, more a threat.

Catchphrases

John Torode: "Ladies and gentlemen - let's cook!"

"We're looking for a great amateur cook, who can make it as a professional!"

"This is one tough competition!"

"Whoever wins, it'll change their life!"

"These celebrities are all passionate about cooking!"

"Step away from your benches, please - your time is up!"

"And our winner - our quarter-finallist (or whatever) is...!"

"And the contestant leaving us is....!"

"Decision time - who's it gonna be, Mr Wallace?"

Gregg Wallace: "Someone who can turn out exceptional food!" (For the Celebrity version, it's: "Someone who's more than just a good home cook.")

As mentioned above, "Cooking doesn't get tougher than this!" and, "This competition just gets tougher!"

"You've got twooooooo minutes!"

(On occasion): "That, my friend, is a triumph."

Both judges: "Get it on the plates!"

Monica Galetti:

"Move it - get that garnish on the plate NOW!!!" (this was filmed as part of the opening titles of the 2009 Professionals series and frankly, the phrase became pretty tiresome after a few editions).

"And the chef leaving us today is....!"

(To the surviving three chefs): "Tomorrow, you will be cooking for my boss, Michel Roux Junior," followed by either "Don't let me down!" "Don't disappoint me!" or simply, "Good luck!"

Trivia

They dropped the "Goes Large" from the title in 2008, possibly because they finally noticed how silly India Fisher sounded when trying to make it sound portentous in the opening titles. 2008 also saw the series promoted from its original 6:30pm slot to a mid-evening 8:30 berth, where it performed so well that it is now set to transfer to BBC One in 2010.

Due to the need for lots of close-ups of the food, it's often cold by the time the judges get to taste it. John Torode says that this doesn't matter because if the flavours are right it will still work.

Asked "Have you ever picked the wrong winner?" in a Guardian interview in March 2008, Gregg Wallace replied "Yeah. Celebrity Masterchef. The case of Hardeep Singh Kohli and Matt Dawson. Hardeep is the greatest Masterchef winner that never was." Gregg's repeated this in other interviews since, though John Torode stands by the original decision.

One contestant in the 2008 regular series presented John and Gregg with pork accompanied by something very unusual - chocolate sauce. Although the combination was not a good one - surprise, surprise! - John and Gregg so admired his offbeat approach that they put him through to the next stage of the contest. (However, he did not progress any further than that.)

Series 1 winner Thomasina Miers went on to co-star in the (slightly bonkers) Channel 4 series The Wild Gourmets, and now runs Wahaca in Covent Garden which serves up Mexican street food. [1] (The contestants in one of the editions of the 2009 regular series had to go through their Pressure Test in her restaurant - she assured them at the start that she didn't envy them one bit, as she'd been through it herself, but that certainly didn't stop her demanding the exacting standards that all the professional chefs demand). 2007 champion Steven Wallis has been spotted working as a "home economist" (or "dogsbody") in the background of Great British Menu.

Liz McClarnon won the 2008 Celebrity Masterchef series, despite having apparently hardly ever cooked before - she was even unfamiliar with the use of an oven! John and Gregg recognised that she had a natural talent for it - which of course got better and better. Indeed, she was not the only celebrity lacking cooking-experience in that series - Spoony revealed to John and Gregg that his mother had not allowed him to cook when he was a kid, since he was very left-handed. In spite of this, he managed to cook some decent dishes, although unlike Liz, he did not progress beyond the first round. Michael Buerk also had little experience of cooking: he wrote a very damning article on the programme, saying how much he had hated the experience and how he was - unlike most other Masterchef contestants - determined not to win his heat. (He needn't have worried, though - he was up against a certain Ms McClarnon!) In addition, Iwan Thomas reached the 2009 final despite having only limited cooking-experience: he also clearly had a natural ability, even if he didn't win the series. He said afterwards that, while he might still cook himself beans on toast in the future, it would definitely be the exception rather than the rule, because he now knew that he could cook much more sophisticated meals.

The 2009 regular series winner, Mat Follas, told John and Gregg how he loved foraging for food and was always out and about in the Dorset countryside, where he lived, searching for plants and mushrooms - and fishing as well. He was filmed doing so with his wife and children in the latter stages of the contest. In the final cookery test of all, his dessert included a stick of hokey-pokey - apparently, hokey-pokey is a name for honeycomb in New Zealand, where he grew up.

It would seem that no allowance is made if contestants are injured or unwell on any of the "Masterchef" series. In the 2009 regular series, one contestant cut himself so badly that John advised him to go to A & E, thereby knocking him out of the contest. This was a real shame, because the contestant seemed to have made a decent start up until that point - but he may yet return next year as a comeback contestant, should he wish to. Simon Shepherd also cut himself in the pro kitchen during the 2009 Celebrity series and had to retire early from that round, but he was at least able to do the Final Test. Later in the same series, one comeback contestant, Marie Helvin, was so unwell on the second day of filming that she was unable to go through either the Pressure Test or the Final Test. It was therefore a 50/50 match between Tony Hadley and Helen Lederer - and Tony won.

Champions

2005: Thomasina "Tommi" Miers
2006: Peter Bayless
2007: Steven Wallis
2008: James Nathan
2009: Mat Follas

Celebrity Masterchef
2006: Matt Dawson
2007: Nadia Sawalha
2008: Liz McClarnon
2009: Jayne Middlemiss

Masterchef: The Professionals
2008: Derek Johnstone
2009: Steve Groves

Inventor

Adapted by Karen Ross and John Silver from the original Masterchef format by Franc Roddam.

Merchandise

Masterchef Goes Large book (revised 2006 edition) (also the original 2005 edition)

Web links

BBC Food

Off The Telly review

See also

Masterchef

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