Britain's Best Home Cook: an overegged attempt to recreate Bake Off's glory days - review

Ever since Mary Berry classily declined to follow The Great British Bake Off when it moved from the BBC to Channel 4, the Corporation has kept the doyenne of dough busy. She has fronted two cookery series and another where she visited stately homes. Last night came Britain’s Best Home Cook (BBC One), Berry’s closest vehicle yet to the beloved cake-making contest.

This eight-week contest sees 10 home cooks compete to be crowned the country’s best. On your marks, get set, bake! Oops, wrong show. Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this! Sorry, that’s the other one. 

Berry, as judge, was flanked by a MasterChef-esque pair of shouty young geezers: chef Dan Doherty and produce expert Chris Bavin (basically Gregg Wallace with hair). Three judges felt too many, with the trio frequently jostling to have their say. 

Proceedings were hosted with quick wit by Claudia Winkleman, who gave hugs and high-fives as she bonded with the cooks. Winkleman and Berry quickly formed an affectionate double act – one that sounded like a firm of solicitors specialising in tailored black-trouser litigation. 

The cooks’ first challenge was to prepare their ultimate burger with at least two side dishes. We had a Welsh rarebit burger, an Indian spiced patty, a Moroccan lamb burger, Nigerian suya spiced beef and a wild boar burger with gorgonzola - all served with exotic salads, tempura vegetables and other fancy trimmings. This was home cooking with serious pretensions.

Cancer research technician Pippa was the unanimous winner with her Asian shredded short-rib in a bao bun. As her reward, she got to choose the ingredient around which the next round would be based and plumped for nuts. Squirrels rejoice and allergies be damned.

The four weakest cooks faced a climactic eliminator to see who’d be sent home first. Cue split egg yolks, curdled sauces and all manner of sweaty stove-top stress. Nerves got the better of Northern Irish matriarch Fiona and she received the wooden spoon, accepting her fate with a philosophical shrug.  

The main problem was that this all felt wearingly familiar, from the generic title downwards. The format was MasterChef meets Bake Off. The cooks shared a house like a culinary take on The Apprentice or a better-fed Big Brother. Winkleman’s presence even gave it a whiff of Strictly Come Dancing. It was as if the creators had thrown a handful of existing hits into a blender, then poured the resultant mush onto our screens. 

Such series often start shakily: there are too many contestants to invest in emotionally, characters are yet to emerge, the format still to bed in. On this evidence, though, Britain’s Best Home Cook was overdone, derivative and a TV cooking contest too far. Soggy bottom still to be confirmed.