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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Letter from... cookery shows
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Letter from... cookery shows

Cookery shows are my favouritethe drama, the frenzied competitionbut as with everything else these days, nobody seems to be capable of just shutting up

Photo: AFPPremium
Photo: AFP

Why must we keep talking and talking? Please, everybody, shut up a little. Especially you cookery show contestants. 

Approximately 40% of everything I watch on television is cookery shows. (The remaining is evenly split between Modern Family reruns and football. Food, football and funny. That is my life. Oh also family. Damn that is going to hurt.) 

And my favourite genre of cookery shows is 'professional cooking' competitions in which high-quality professional chefs are pitted against other high-quality professional chefs for awards that are usually quite insignificant for established chefs. In other words they do it for the honour, the media coverage and to assuage their hunger for competition. 

I really do vastly prefer this type of show to the more popular sub-genre in which amateurs—ambulance drivers, housewives, lumberjacks, never an economist—are pitted against each other for trophies and cash prizes. Those shows are emotional and dramatic, but two weeks later you don't recall a single scene despite watching non-stop for months on end. 

But when professional chefs face off, the sparks fly. It is gladiatorial combat with cleavers and sous vide machines and micro-herbs. The outcomes are usually spectacular because, I presume, the stakes are higher. Overnight, obscure chefs and their eateries are catapulted to fame and fortune. 

And of all such shows my favourite is perhaps the Great British Menu on the BBC. GBM enjoys nothing like the cult following, national adoration and social media virality of the Great British Bake Off. But I never miss an episode. 

The premise is simple enough. Chefs across the UK are divided into regional contests where they compete to cook four courses—starters, fish, mains and dessert. Each regional champion chef then competes in a national final before the four winning courses are chosen and then served at a great themed banquet. It is mostly frenzied but good-natured fun with lots of diverse food and contentious judging. 

But the one thing I can't handle is—OH MY GOD—the relentless talking. From the beginning to the end of each episode, contestants and judges constantly spout inanities that have been filmed purely for the purpose of avoiding long silences on screen. 

Tell me reader, why are we so petrified of silence? Is it because of the Internet? Has the potential for limitless content production—endless blog posts, numbered tweets posted in 78/134 format, four-and-a-half-hour-long podcasts about Mongols—made us incapable of just shutting the hell up? What happened to seven-minute long shots of bears malingering in a glen before Attenborough chipped in with a word or two of comment? 

But now? 

"Chef how much do you really want to win this?" 

"Chef do you think you can pull this off?"

"Chef where do you want to see yourself in the context?" 

And the answers? 

"I really really want this." 

"If I get it right I think I can pull it off." 

"I want to go as far as I can in this contest because it means everything to me." 

At which point the high-profile judge says cheerily: "If this beetroot tastes delicious you could be staying in this contest." 

What. The. Bloody. Nonsense. What purpose does any of this random, useless verbiage achieve but to take up screen time or build narrative bridges between scenes? Why can't the producers just show the chefs at work in silence with some mild backing music? 

And this nonsensical tendency permeates everything. From cookery shows to TV shows to news debates. People fall over each other to just spout insubstantial fluff. 

But wait. Have you read some of the "long-form journalism" online or in print? Boss. Do we really need that 1,500-word opening section on the furniture in the protagonist's house or the weather? 

"One recent September morning Mohinder Khanna was standing in his kitchen gently pouring tea leaves into a white China teapot that was chipped on one corner." 

"'Oh I dropped it while washing it one day,' Khanna explained, wearing a green turtleneck." 

STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT. REALLY JUST STOP IT. HAVE SOME CONTROL. 

So please can we all exert some self-control please? And express with constraint? 

And in that spirit.

Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend. 

Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com

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Published: 24 Sep 2016, 11:21 PM IST
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