A New Life

We've just been watching Masterchef on our recently acquired BBC Lifestyle channel. It's become one of Noi's great favourites, tonight's programme being the start of the third series they've screened. I can easily understand her interest. The actual cooking involved is only part of the attraction, and that's quite fascinating in itself, even for someone like me who's never in the kitchen. But in addition to that there's the intensity of the competition itself with the various chefs being put under what looks from the outside like enormous pressure, especially when they're sent to do shifts in top notch kitchens and have to deliver for real. In fact it all gets a bit too much for me at times - I don't regard it as a programme I can relax to.

And I've noticed something else that adds to the pressure. You get a strong sense of the personalities of the contestants, even within the tight timeframe of a single episode. It's cleverly edited in that respect, often utilising telling reaction shots intercut with bits of interviews to illustrate just how seriously they take the competition, and take it seriously they do, almost without exception, if we are to believe them. The usual line is that they regard their participation as an opportunity to change their lives, and they are going to be none too happy if they don't succeed in doing so. So the viewer, well me really, ends up wanting them all to win in order to avoid what is obviously going to be a profound disappointment.

Which rather begs the question: what is it about their lives that's so bad they need to escape them? And why should cooking, of all things, be the solution?