Food critics bravely put their money where their mouth is
Should a critic be able to do the thing they judge? Not always, surely. No one requires opera critics to sing like nightingales nor ballet critics to dance like swans. We TV reviewers aren’t expected to rustle up dramas and documentaries. But what of restaurant writers? It seems reasonable to suppose they know their way around a pot and a pan.
This was the Saturnalian intrigue at the heart of Masterchef: Battle of the
Critics (BBC One), in which five of the show’s snooty, nitpicking judges came down from Mount Olympus and entered the kitchen, where they found the tables were turned. “We know you can dish it out. Can you dish it up?” barked Gregg Wallace, sounding pithy with a twist of lime.
On the whole the answer was yes, but at what cost? “I’m having the most horrible time,” announced Grace Dent, last spotted in the jungle tackling invertebrate platters and sphincter de marsupial. A shredded bag of nerves as she presented her butter chicken, she welled up when the presenters gave her a thumbs up. So did Leyla Kizim after prepping a mighty Cypriot spread. Just to prove that male critics could be overwhelmed by the occasion too, the ice-cool William Sitwell (The Telegraph’s very own restaurant critic) collapsed in floods after knocking up some rabbit.
That left Jimi Famurewa and Jay Rayner as the only dry eyes at the hob. The former cooked with a carefree, humble aura, the latter with the steely air of someone compelled to banquet or be vanquished. On day two they all cooked for three former winners, “I hope you’ll remember you’ll probably all be opening restaurants in the future,” Rayner said like the very loftiest maitre d’, nonchalantly serving them three minutes late. His seafood fregola drew the loudest coos and gasps.
On the menu was a lot of chicken, plenty of chocolate and much rhubarb. Sitwell was fond of fondants, sweet and savoury. Kizim, whose Mediterranean and Mauritian recipes were the kitchen equivalent of world music, walked off with the award for most recherché ingredient: water buffalo milk clotted cream. Good luck sourcing that in Lidl.
The truest word was spoken by Ping Coombes, winner of Masterchef back in 2014. “I don’t feel sorry for them at all actually.” And even if she did, they didn’t need her pity as in this culinary experiment there was no sign of the commonest dish of all: egg on face.
Exactly how funny can you make the graphic business of murder? Based on a True Story (Sky Max) opens with a scene of frenzied savagery that evokes Psycho. A woman is stabbed by an intruder once, twice, three times… 10 times. Because this is the first scene, it’s not yet clear that hilarity is to follow. And yet killing – serial killing – turns out to be at the heart of an uproarious and fleet-footed assault on the growth industry of true crime.
The serial killer on the loose in California, it swiftly emerges, is handsome, charming plumber Matt (Tom Bateman). His guilt is first suspected by the Bartletts, whose leaky toilet he’s fixing. Nathan (Chris Messina) is a ho-hum tennis coach whose sole career highlight was beating Roger Federer. Ava (Kaley Cuoco) is a true-crime obsessive who hooks up with gal pals to talk murder.
On their uppers and expecting their first child, they plot to blackmail Tom into collaborating on a mega-hit podcast. The deal with Matt is no more murders, though naturally they soon lose control of the narrative.
The show is at its sharpest calling out the amoral, mercantilised obsession with true crime – “the great American art form”, it’s called here. The vapidities of LA and social media are easier targets but mercilessly hit by a script that’s well served by a cast with reliably funny bones.
At one point the Bartletts are horrified to discover that their podcast has been “cancelled” by, among others, Judi Dench. A slyer celebrity gag is unspoken and perhaps accidental: the knife-wielding slayer is a dead ringer for Federer. (A chillier echo finds Tom Bateman and executive producer Jason Bateman, no relation, sharing a surname with Bret Easton Ellis’s most American of psychos, Patrick Bateman.)
Based on a True Story is a very guilty pleasure. Its closest comedic cousin is Barry, which required the viewer to be both appalled and entertained by contract killing. There the victims were male. Here they’re female, and young and beautiful. One is impaled on a parasol. Another is slashed in a fantasy sequence. The body of a third is dumped in a car boot. To lampoon true crime is to ape its enthusiasm for gore. Its worse crime is to terminate on an unsatisfying midpoint, with no