Masterchef Goes Vintage on Netflix

Gregg Wallace quietly sneaks on to Netflix

Since the start of July, Masterchef — currently doing its celebrity rounds on BBC One — has been hanging out on Netflix, with two seasons of the original, Masterchef: The Professionals, and Celebrity Masterchef available. The question therefore: which one to watch?

The original probably has the most to recommend it all round; the celebrity version dispenses with some of the seriousness. But in terms of maybe learning something and getting a front-row seat on what pressure can do to chefs, the skills tests in Masterchef: The Professionals can’t be beaten, especially for Gregg Wallace’s asides. It’s also refreshing to see Torode be a bit more contextual and passionate in his judging, something which has faded in recent seasons in favour of broad-stroke-good-bad commentary.

And in other news...

• Boris Johnson’s obesity strategy suffers from the same personal responsibility/military language curse as his COVID-19 strategy.
• Here’s a recap of what happened in London restaurants in the last week.
• Nando’s says it wants to be more environmentally friendly, but it isn’t going to use free-range chicken anytime soon. [Big Hospitality]
• The government’s “eat out to help out” voucher scheme now has a postcode checker for participating restaurants. [GOV.UK]
• Area Man takes gawping, unmasked supermarket selfies to mock safety precautions and ‘own the libs’:

• Good tweet: