Monsieur Pastry’s fruity accent makes even Clouseau sound dull!
The ingredients that go into Bake Off: The
Professionals (C4) are astonishing. Your senses whirl with chantilly cream, nougatine, almond sable and all 15 of the French vowel sounds. It’s a rich confection.
Judge Benoit Blin reinvents every word he speaks. ‘Ze stondurd ees axpected to rase,’ he declared as the show returned for its second series.
Then he mentioned rumours, or ‘rheumoures’, a favourite word of Inspector Clouseau — though actor Peter Sellers sounds positively monotone, compared to Benoit.
What fellow judge Cherish Finden lacks in a ludicrous accent, she makes up for with her savage commentaries. Instead of tasting one chef’s efforts, she just picked up the pastry and crumbled it with an icy stare. It was the technique of an east end gangster come to collect protection money.
Another contestant was told: ‘I refuse to taste the tart because it is not cooked.’ In fact, it appeared just fractionally underbaked.
Bake Off star Liam Charles and stand-up comic Tom Allen turned up the campery, flouncing around to shout the times out and tease the chefs. Mostly, though, they were just a distraction . . . and no one had time for that.
The standard (or ‘ stondurd’) is
so high because these cooks are all full-time pastry wizards, several of them from five- star hotels or restaurants boasting Michelin stars.
Despite this, a couple were barely out of their teens and another, Connor from hull, was just 19. That’s impressive.
Their showstoppers were worthy of the name. One duo, Daisy and Reshmi, created a fairytale tableau in sponge and chocolate, with a wolf dressed as Red Riding hood that deserved a role in Game Of Thrones.
Another did dainty triangular sandwiches that were really Bakewell tarts. More tea, vicar?
There were the usual Bake Off disasters, such as mousses that failed to set in the fridge (I suspect the producers can turn the studio freezers into ovens at the flick of a switch).
Unlike the basic Bake Off, though, it offers nothing you could copy at home . . . unless you feel able to craft a grandfather clock out of red velvet cake and chocolate.
With such flamboyance, we scarcely needed the presenters.
Flamboyance was, however, in short supply on Trust Me (BBC1), the Gothic hospital murder mystery starring Alfred enoch as Jamie, an injured Army veteran.
Jamie’s emotions are so repressed that when his heart monitor flatlined at the episode’s climax, nothing about his personality changed.
he lay still with his eyes glazed and his face an impassive mask of fury, just as he did when he had a heartbeat. The doctors were battling to bring him back to life, but how will they be able to tell?
Jamie’s inability to show his feelings has been a distinct disadvantage, as he hunts the serial killer bumping off paraplegic patients on the underlit ward. When creepy Dr Alex (Richard Rankin) tortured him with a hypodermic needle, all Jamie could do was wince.
Later, burly nurses held him down and forcibly injected him with drug overdoses — other people might have cried out, but Jamie just gritted his teeth.
he sneaked out with an exArmy mate to go clubbing and, when his wheelchair got kicked over, just lay on the dancefloor looking cross. even in his dreams, he has no discernible emotions, merely waiting for an unseen enemy to slit his throat.
All this has another disadvantage: it stops us from caring very much about the character. he’s a boring hero.