Great British Menu

My feelings on this show have changed over time - I saw it for the first time around 2016 or so, and I've actually gone and watched nearly every season I can.

From season 16 on, with Andi Oliver as presenter, I absolutely love it. Nisha, Ed, and Tom are great judges and the humour is fab.

But season 15 was weird and all the prior ones are stodgy and stuff because the judges were very snobby people. Nice, but snobby and very white British.

But I'm Canadian and I watch on iPlayer. Like any British show aired in Canada, if you saw a broadcast version, they'd cut out way too much to take from 58 minutes in the UK to 42 minutes here.

The gist of the series is this: the UK is divvied into 8 regions, and in each, four chefs - previously just 3 - compete over 4 courses (and, since 2015/2016, two not judged tasters, a canapé & pre dessert, which are used for tie-breaking).

The show used to be 5x30 minutes a week, and now it is 3x58:00 instead. It's the same format weekly for 8 weeks - canapé, starter and fish on night one, main and pre-dessert and dessert on night two, and all 6 courses cooked for the judges by the top two chefs of that heat on night 3.

The first two shows each week have a mentor chef judge who will score all the courses after the day's cooking. The top 3 on night one continue on, with the 4th getting the axe. The top 2 go through after desserts on night 2. And on night three, the top chef then gets put through to the finals week.

In finals week, all 8 chefs compete to try to get one or more courses through to the "great British banquet." First night is starters, second is fish, etc. Fifth night, it's the big banquet and you see how it all plays out.

This year, the theme is British animation & illustration, and prior years have been things like great British science contributions, technology, rock n roll, TV, etc. I love watching the creative ways chefs meet the brief, which has vastly improved since season 1.

I also love how the show is never nasty or mean spirited. Chefs help each other and have lots of camaraderie. But that was not true in the early seasons, which I didn't enjoy. I think it changed by year 5 or so, under new directors who decided to make it competitive but friendly.

Now with the new judges and host, the personality of the show has caught up to the pleasant fun competitiveness.

This is one series where you can start watching at any point in the years it has been aired on, so I highly recommend watching seasons 16-18, if you're new to the show. (For whiplash, after you finish, watch the very toxic season 1.)

I'm watching season 13 right now. It's the first season I've seen. I have enjoyed it so much! But, the reason I'm writing this is the Scottish Chefs. Yes, through the season several chefs have been lovely and truly gracious. But Ben was so sweet and honest and wanted all of them to do well. He was so endearing. All the Scots seemed so supportive and a little self deprecating I related with them. Great show!

There are signs of strain, if not desperation, at the BBC, as it fails to come up with hit new entertainment formats. As a result, things like this and Spelling Bee (which actually looked as though it had been retired) are being bumped up to more prominent positions, though they are themselves already pretty tired shows.

The format changes deemed to make this suitable for prime time have not done it any favours. For a start, an hour of it is far too much; and Susan Calman, installed as presenter where there had been none before, is totally superfluous and (therefore) just irritating. At one point, because someone had been appointed as 'veteran' mentor despite being unable to eat fish, we had a ludicrous situation where no fewer than three people - one per contestant - were hovering annoyingly around the kitchen and getting in the chefs' way.

I thought children's literature would be a welcome relief from the sanctimonious themes of recent years with all those heroes, but it appears political correctness is now too deeply ingrained to be removed. The chefs - few of whom give the impression of having read any books - seem to expect applause if they produce a dish representing racial harmony, or dyslexia, even if it's horrible; and the Scots in particular think it a great thing to use any ingredient from Scotland no matter how revolting everybody finds it. Efforts to make the contestants more 'diverse' routinely end in early failure. Then we were treated to a tirade from Cressida Cowell about school libraries which was as woolly a piece of thinking as you could want.

The portions are getting vanishingly small (steak with one chip - ONE!!); but perhaps it doesn't matter as few of the chefs produced anything that looks like it would be worth eating. So many of them are about technique and concept, and you wonder whether they really understand what it is to *enjoy* a meal.

It's not quite a dead horse, yet, but this extra flogging isn't doing it any good.

2021: the reappearance of things like this and Masterchef far less than a year after the previous series shows that they only continue to be flogged harder. GBM has another improvement for the worse in the replacement of Susan Calman (who is perhaps too busy having grand days oot) with the self-important though entirely unqualified Andi Oliver, who insists on chirping up with her own contribution after the mentor has delivered his judgement - an infuriating habit. And she in turn has been replaced as judge by Rachel Khoo, another entirely undeserving case and one of the most irritating people in TV. I suppose we should be grateful that we still have two of the original judges; but, truth be told, they don't play a big part in the show as it now is.

Other than Prue, the final judges are generally rubbish. The camerawork, preliminary judging, cooking, cooking quality, gamesmanship, intimacy of the kitchen are all above average.

I am just shocked by the companions to Prue's role.. they should appreciate the work, the use of the ingredients and the taste/ presentation. They just seemed more interested in being noticed than being fair. Having seen judging on master chef professional - I am just shocked.

But the show is worth watching except for the final judging.

Oh I now have 61 characters left so I have to keep on typing for a little bit.

Used to watch a lot at the beginning, even if I found the judges pompous and arrogant most of time. The food could be pretentious but still you knew what to expect.

As years go on, they pick these themed banquets and the chefs seem to have some story that doesn't reflect their cooking. As a previous reviewer said re the childrens literature theme, some of it was just too off-topic.

Don't know why we need a 'host' and a mentor - the mentors have usually been there themselves or have enough presence to get their ideas across to the contestants and the judges. Too much distraction and chefs being late to the pass.