REALLY!

Second Fiddle, in a recent post on his blog (now sadly deleted - oh what a loss to humnity) referred to Come Dine With Me the UK reality programme that has five people cooking for each other on consecutive nights in their own homes. This is a recent addition to the onslaught of cheaply made, never-ending ridiculous scenarios that have ambushed television and is inexorably dumbing down the offerings making it even harder for quality programming to shine through.

Apart from not getting a look-in because a dumbed down viewing public watch this crap and therefore the ratings go up and of course programmers schedule more of the shit, quality TV costs more so producers default to the cheap to make reality formats. I've said before that some of the best TV dramas coming from the USA are on the HBO pay for view channels. The best UK stuff when it does get purchased by our programmers often gets buried at odd times of the day or night.

Anyway, back to Come Dine With Me. I like it. I just watched 2 and a half hours of it this morning (5 half hour shows shown at the same time.) It is good television. Putting 5 different people who haven't met before together for an entertaining challenge is inspired. This is not one of those execrable cooking contests, nor is it  Big Brother or Survivor idiocy, this programme explores the dynamics of strangers interacting with each other and exposing their personalities, strengths and weaknesses. The selection criteria is pretty obvious. There is invariably; a bitchy one; a snobby/pretentious one; a nice one; a gay one and one of life's losers. The whole thing is held together by viciously funny and apt observations by a commentator. It really works as a UK programme with the different social classes, regional accents and generally interesting and funny people to draw from but I doubt that the USA version and the soon to be made New Zealand version will be much cop. But I could be wrong. The German one looks interesting. See:

HERE