Matthew eats… Easy Bake Battle

A while ago, I blogged about Cook at All Costs, a Netflix cookery competition. It was one that was done right. Intriguing but simple concept, challenging food ideas but not too challenging, warm atmosphere. It was an enjoyable show to wind down to. And best of all, it had plenty of those ‘oh that’s clever/I wouldn’t have done that’ moments. Most importantly, it felt natural.

Then you have Easy Bake Battle. And this show is a whole different kettle of fish. Three chefs battle over two rounds. The first is a generic challenge tied around the theme, where the twist is that the cooking equipment is not straightforward. It must be for instance, microwaveable or done in a deep fat fryer. The weakest chef is then eliminated before the final two face a cook off where their dish, again tied to a similar theme.

I have a few issues with this show. I will start with the host, Antoni Porowski from Queer Eye. For all of his easy-going charm, he is not a natural in this environment. His critiques are neither passionate celebrations nor scathing, more of a generic ‘that was really nice, well done, but I would have done this’ and then some bland, inoffensive criticism. His role as an encourager is also strangely lacking in substance here, something that suggests Queer Eye is well edited in his favour.

The food also feels overall uninspiring. Yes, home cooking should be celebrated. But I just don’t get excited by what is made. Show me someone turn round the perfect pork chop or beautifully flaky fish. I want to see home cooks make the best food in the world look accessible, not just pull together some fried food that anyone could make.

I also find the handy hints cutaways annoying. Yes, it’s amazing that you have this neat trick to trim carrots in record time or whatever, but I haven’t tuned in for that. I want to see the finished plate of food and I want to be imagining eating it myself.

The final nail in the coffin though is that the twist in the show is always the same. It’s also the modified Easy Bake oven at the end. Yes, I’m aware it’s in the title. But it becomes seen one episode seen them all very quickly. And there feels no jeopardy. The twist with Cook at all Costs was that you never knew quite what ingredients or help would turn up. Here the format is repeated to the end of time.

Does anything redeem it? I’m not sure. I think I’m still watching as it gives me and my other half something to moan about. But I’m not gagging for a second season. In fact, you could argue I don’t have the stomach for it.

Matthew eats… Sing On!

So first of all you can tell I have a new laptop after weeks of not having one and relying on my phone to be my computer as I am doing another blog post this week. I’m sure you can all barely contain your excitement, wondering what I will make of my next selection.

And this time it’s Sing On!, a musical game show. The format is, on the surface, simple. Six contestants compete to be the best singer and win a cash prize. Each episode is themed, and the quality of singing is judged by some kind of machine, a bit like the thing used on Singstar. The more accurate everyone sings, the more money goes into the pot. In the first three rounds, the strongest singer is immune and everyone votes to send one of the other contestants home. The next round it is simply the weakest singer of those remaining, before the final two battle for the cash.

But then there are add-ons that complicate things. Round two sees Tituss’ Prize (more on the host shortly) for best physical performance (the question of ‘why?’ springs to mind). Then in round four, the remaining three all get the chance to hit a ‘golden note’ which also comes with bonus cash, although this one at least makes more sense. Even so, I’m not sure either add anything overall.

The host himself, Tituss Burgess, is also problematic. He was great in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, indeed he drove the whole show. But he is not a game show host. The mock ‘I’m the star’ attitude other hosts have here feels like it isn’t such a self-own, more something he actually deep down sincerely believes. He also fails in my view to interact really with the contestants. The conversations are stilted, as if without a script he isn’t sure what his next line is.

Is there anything good about this show? Well, the songs chosen are absolute bangers. So if you are happy just to watch for the music, then you’re fine. But otherwise, this show isn’t in the right key.

Matthew eats… In for a Penny

I like to think that my taste in TV is quite broad. I like a decent drama, a simple comedy, even a documentary or two if it tickles my subject interests. Hey, even trashy reality shows work for me. I try not to prejudge too much, but I draw the line at two things: outright misery and the Kardashians. Some would class them as the same thing.

I also thought I would never watch In for a Penny. It seemed just too ridiculous and filled with the kind of people I cross the road to avoid. You know the kind, the ones who go ‘I’m mad, me!” when really they are just loud and poor judges of social cues. And yet I have somehow fallen for this show in unexpected ways.

The premise is simple. Stephen Mulhern descends on a random UK city and challenges the locals to take part in bizarre games to win cash prizes. For example, if you can fill your tank of petrol to precisely the right amount, you win that tank. It all culminates in some individuals being able to play for £1000 by completing five challenges, the final one being the stopwatch challenge of getting the stopwatch to stop at the right number of seconds.

So what is the appeal? Well, Mulhern himself is fantastic, somehow getting away with being quite rude to the public without anyone taking offence. Flies down? He’ll tell you. Dodgy haircut? It will be slated. Questionable fashion? Mocked. Yet it works, because somehow it never comes across as hurtful. Perhaps it helps he is slightly self-deprecating with it.

There is also a charming self-awareness of how naff the show is. Deliberate showings of where things haven’t gone to plan and jokes about the budget are par for the course. It’s the equivalent of football fans chanting ‘we’re sh** and we know we are’ as a form of coping with the pain of loyalty.

Would I change anything? Less challenges that involve wasting food perhaps. But other than that I struggle to think of anything. To polish it would cost it the charm. Although you may want to stick something more cerebral in alongside. No, not the Kardashians.

Matthew eats… Bullshit

I don’t envy anyone trying to invite a new quiz show format. It feels like everything has been done, with either ever-escalating prize money or increasingly niche concepts. And then there is where to pitch your general knowledge level required. Do you go basic or highbrow?

So kudos then to Netflix’s Bullshit, which seems just original enough to cut through. The concept is that a contestant answers 10 questions to win $1 million dollars. Except the questions are quite hard – some you might know, but to have the knowledge span necessary is impossible. But the key isn’t knowing the answer – it’s convincing your opponents you do.

You see, there are three other players trying to take your spot. They are asked after each question if they believe you really know it or are ‘bullshitting’. If you do know the answer, no problem, regardless if they believe you or not you can face the next question. But if you are wrong, and all three say you are wrong, you are out.

So what’s to stop your opponents calling you out every time in the hope you are right? Well they will only be next to play if they have made the most accurate guesses as to if you are telling the truth or not. So if they believe you are telling the truth, then they have the incentive to back you. Essentially, this is poker in quiz show format, where you can either choose to fold or go all in on your gut instinct in whether someone is as smart as they say they are.

I am quite simply hooked. The viewer can essentially play two games at once, one as the contestant answering and bluffing their way through the questions, another as the opponent trying to suss whether the contestant is bluffing.

Any drawbacks? Well as a Brit, there is the slight overbearingness that American game show contestants can have, with everybody so intense. Having said that, I think far fewer Brits would have the gall to bluff strangers. Still, it would be fun to see someone give it a whirl. As concepts go, it is refreshingly strong. Or is this just a bluff?

Matthew eats…Cooking with the Stars

The ‘Celebrity Learns Skill’ genre of show is endlessly popular, although for me I can’t often see why. I don’t buy into the ideas of journeys or that it really is their ambition to learn something. It is pretty much always a case that their agent has turned around and said ‘pay your mortgage for the next six months by learning how to dance/ice skate/dry stonewall’.

This level of cynicism could be behind my vague dislike of Cooking With the Stars. The premise is eight celebrities, all supposedly terrible cooks, are paired with a professional chef. Each week there is a theme, e.g. Indian cookery, where they must learn how to reproduce a dish of the chef’s choice. The weakest chefs go into an eliminator where they must produce a previously unseen recipe and, after a blind tasting, the worst of the worst goes home.

The format as detailed above causes me some problems. The editing is suspiciously scant on the celeb’s journey as chefs, with all the focus on the reproduction of the dish in the studio. Now that wouldn’t be so bad, but as result we don’t believe in the relationship between chef and celeb. I’m not saying we need a new curse of Strictly, but at least have me invest in whether or not the contestant gets their own chef’s approval. Not only that, but where is the yardstick of how much a celeb has improved?

The problems don’t end there though. We also have the issue of the presenting team. It is co-presented by Emma Willis and the now ubiquitous Tom Allen. Fundamentally, there is no chemistry between the two of them, with both of them (but Willis especially) looking like they would be much happier flying solo. The styles don’t match either, with Willis going for the ‘how much would this mean to you?’ approach (and I’m assuming here she isn’t referring to the contestant’s pay cheques or possible post-show endorsements), whilst Allen would much rather just have fun and wind everybody up. Neither really works, with Willis coming across as asking for an emotional investment that we just don’t get and Allen too frivolous for an otherwise sulky ‘audience’.

In essence, the clash of presenting demonstrates the neither fish nor fowl problem with the show. If this is meant to be one where something really rides on how well a naan bread turns out, gives us the story of why it matters. If it is just a bit of light-hearted fun, the let everybody off the leash a bit more.

As it stands, I struggle to see a second series being made. Viewers can surely spot the stilted nature of the show and those still watching like me are probably just hanging around to see if the declaration of the winner is worth it. The show is neither a spicy curry nor a smooth creamy sauce. It is a tepid, lumpy mess. I pay no compliments to the chef.

Matthew eats… Nailed It! Double Trouble

I have entered one of my fallow periods for TV viewing where nothing new seems to be on. It’s a deadly combination of the big hitters winding down for summer and allowing sport to dominate with the fact we are still recovering from the Covid-inflicted lag.

Thankfully, there has been some respite with Netflix releasing it’s latest season of Nailed It! I had felt that the show was running out of steam and becoming formulaic – bad bakers make bad cakes while the production goes completely OTT in a way American TV only can. Everything seemed to be reduced to a stock phrase or two.

But the latest season feels rejuvenated. This time, teams compete and it seems to have brought with a pep in its step. The jokes are funnier again, the mood seems softer and some of the cakes even look like they could recognisably be the finished article.

Where the team aspect has really helped is with the back-and-forth between the contestants and the judges, which now seems a more equal banter. Similarly, allowing the pairs to compete seems to have added a new level of humour. It could be the despairing luck of an uptight daughter watching her unhinged parent freestyle. Or maybe two friends pushing their friendship to the brink of breaking down. Whatever it is, the chaos is now doubled and zings.

There are still irritants. The distraction buttons used are getting more gimmicky and no longer feel integral. Just give the weakest baker a extra hint maybe instead. But in truth that feels like the only one now. Everything feels like it’s working again even those bits that haven’t changed like Nicole Byers.

It’s good to see the show back on form. It has really lifted my spirits to see something so fun and uncomplicated recover its joy. It is exactly what is needed.

Matthew eats… Tom Allen’s Quizness

Tom Allen continues to be man of the moment. It is hard to not see him now on TV, especially on Channel 4, who seem to book him for every gig going. Not that this is an attack on him. Television and comedy are both risky industries where you need to make money where you can. It’s why, despite me wanting to give the latter a go, I have put myself off. I don’t fancy my ability to pay my mortgage being dependent on me dressing up in a ridiculous costume on Celebrity Juice.

Anyway, Tom Allen’s latest venture is a new comedy quiz show. Tom Allen’s Quizness. Essentially, this is a quiz show where general knowledge isn’t enough, you also need to get your mind to answer in a certain way. Challenges revolve around things like word substitution, memory and making up puns.

As you can guess, this does risk falling into the puerile, and sometimes does. Brain Chain, where the players must build a phrase out of a series of answers to questions, in particular veers to the toilet humour. Yet overall it is charmingly silly and the players are game enough for it for the viewer not to feel uncomfortable. The questions themselves are hardly challenging, but this isn’t being pitched to the Only Connect crowd.

Allen himself ties it all together nicely. He’s caustic to the players yet charming enough to get away with it. He is a natural rapport builder and is holds himself as host well, for saying most of his previous experience has had him as second fiddle.

This is one of the shows that it’s almost pointless to break down the faults of. It isn’t meant to be analysed. So I will simply say that this is a joyfully silly hour. So let’s just celebrate it and wait for something more meaty to come onto our screens.

Matthew eats… Anything

I am currently going through one of those periods of stasis right now where there is nothing new for me to watch, or at least not ‘new new’. I have too many other hobbies in my life for me to just binge watch for an entire day. But believe me, I am as itching to watch season four of The Crown as anyone.

So in absence of anything else to write, here is my TV schedule for the week starting with today and my levels of enthusiasm for them. I apologise in advance for the tedium.

Sunday: His Dark Materials and 8 Out of 10 Cats. Things are finally starting to happen in the fantasy drama now we are done with the politics and it has remembered why we are watching it. Meanwhile, a new series of the panel show is a welcome silly distraction from the oncoming Monday dread. Enthusiasm: 7/10

Monday: Family Guy, Only Connect & University Challenge: Sharp contrast here I admit. The animated sitcom on its weaker episodes is background noise whilst I catch up my personal correspondence from the day – which is a fancy way of saying I respond to all the WhatsApp messages I have got. By all, I mean two. Then it’s phone hidden away for an hour of quizzing, which I find more relaxing. It’s almost like my version of mindfulness. Enthusiasm: 8/10.

Tuesday: Buffy the Vampire Slayer double bill. I am on the turgid season six at the moment. Honestly, I just want to get to season seven now when the show rediscovered what made it work. Enthusiasm: 4/10.

Wednesday: Harlots. A gym session means I only get an hour of TV time. The third season of the period drama has lacked the oomph of the first two but we are now at the last-ever episode so here is hoping for a satisfying conclusion. Enthusiasm: 7/10.

Thursday: Taskmaster & Celebrity Crystal Maze: A thoroughly joyous opening hour and easily the one I look forward to the most. This is followed by a game show that is in my ‘like but not love’ list. Still, it is an endorphin high of a night. Enthusiasm: 8/10.

Friday: Gogglebox & The Last Leg: A blend of constructed reality and satire, both of which pair nicely with burrowing under a blanket on the sofa. If needs be, the can be cut down to just background noise if I have had a particularly testing week and I’d rather social media my friends. Enthusiasm: 6/10.

Saturday: Sky plus catch up. This is the night I go to my parents and go through things that have been on channels I can’t usually access. It varies quite considerably depending on the preceeding week’s events. Enthusiasm: 7/10.

Netflix: I tune into Netflix if my early evening is less packed than usual. Currently I’m still working through Good Girls (about to start season three) and Bojack Horseman (due to start season two). Both are perfectly serviceable for my needs. Enthusiasm: 7/10.

Ok you can wake up now, I’ve done.

Matthew eats… Taskmaster

When Channel 4 announced they were swooping in an poaching Taskmaster, I was slightly nervous. This was a bigger stage for what is a low-key show. Would we see additional razzmatazz? Would bigger name guests be booked at expense of actual quality? Would some of the rough edges be shaved off?

The answer to this questions is, blessedly, no, no and no. The setting is no more extravagant than before. If there is extra budget I can’t see where it has been spent (hopefully on the hard-working crew). The panelists also seem like the kind who would have signed up in the Dave era. And it definitely feels as cobbled together as it used to. Which is one the shows great joys, by the way.

Of course I perhaps shouldn’t have been worried. Channel 4 transferred GBBO in near perfect fashion. They have an eye for when they are buying a brand that already works and doesn’t need tinkering with.

In fact, what has been more disruptive to the show has been the obvious pandemic. It hasn’t really hurt the studio bits, or even the solo tasks. However the team tasks have been impacted, especially as one team filmed pre-lockdown and the other post. Although to everyone’s credit, they have managed to make the mitigations as entertaining as the actual task.

I always start a new series of Taskmaster wondering if it will hit the heights of the previous ones Then, by about the third episode in, you realise it will as everyone’s characters round out and the running jokes emerge.

This year’s highlights include the terrible prizes, particularly Daisy-May Coopers, Mawaan Rizwan’s sneakiness and Katherine Parkinson’s very middle-class brand of incompetence. The highlight though is Daisy-May Cooper’s utter passion for every task, either of pure ecstatic joy or absolute seething anger. I adore her for it.

So yes, in everything that matters one of my favourite shows has remained intact. It is as silly as ever and as funny as ever. It remains a comedic balm to the soul. And long may it continue.

Matthew eats… Taskmaster

Sometimes it’s good to be proven wrong. The new relationship your friend starts that you think won’t last but then results in their eternal happiness. The idea at work you are convinced will fail but actually makes turning up that bit easier. Or, on a smaller level, where you feel a TV show has lost its way only to surprise you by a return to form.

Taskmaster did just this. After what I felt was a ropey series 5, series 6 then became one of my favourites, with series 7 nearly matching that. The fear of downward spiral ended as I was able to put the stumble in quality down to a blip.

I still had worries for series 8 though. The line-up unnerved me. Only one of the cast was a stand-up comedian, although two others admittedly were, just not known for it. The other two are comedy actors, who I feel struggle on environments like this, as there is a certain element of ad-libbing that doesn’t work for those who depend on a script.

If the first episode is anything to go by, I shouldn’t have worried. Sian Gibson, one of the actors, is actually very good at handling the spontaneous nature of the show, perhaps because Car Share, the show that made her a star, was largely unscripted. Joe Thomas, the other actor, struggles more, and looks hopelessly out of his depth. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes him a convenient receptacle for his fellow panellists’ barbs.

The others (Paul Sinha, Lou Sanders and Iain Stirling) are also on good form. In the case of Stirling this is already bordering on excellent. Sinha is another potential walking punchline as he seems to be the contestant most likely to repeatedly make a pig’s ear of things.

The tasks remain as inventive as ever as well. The first episode saw everything from sexy ventriloquist dolls to competing powerful smells. For a show that depends so much on original and eccentric ideas, it is surprisingly still thriving.

Greg Davies and Alex Horne remain brilliant of course. It is impossible for them not to be. Having said that, an episode of Taskmaster where they are the funniest thing is a poor episode, as the driver should always be the contestants. Good news – they are not.

This show is one of my hours of unadulterated joy. If it can maintain this form I never want it to end. I was as wrong as wrong could be last time. And it has never made me more happy to be so.