Those Who Dine (Come Dine With Me)

Member Name: sandemp

Product:	Come Dine With Me
Date:	30/07/09 (131 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Entertaining often car crash TV

Disadvantages: Can become repetitive

Take a group of four or five people who all live in the same area (but don't know each other), enjoy their food and think they are the perfect host/hostess and get them to each host a dinner party over a week. Throw alcohol and a £1000 prize for the best party into the mix and you have Come Dine With Me. Shown throughout the week on Channels 4 and More 4 (with a full week worth of episodes on Sunday), Come Dine With Me is a programme that appeals to me on many levels.

The format itself is a simple idea, each 30 minute episode follows one contestant's dinner party, with them shopping for and preparing the menu, along with their guests reactions to the menu, food itself and how entertaining they found the night, finishing off with them scoring their host in points out of ten. At the end of the week the final host announces the running order with the winner receiving a prize of £1000. (This is shared if it's a tie). But there's so much more to the show....

The narrator, Dave Lamb, is possibly the best choice for the programme, with his quips and witty one-liners, he often puts my thoughts on the contestants into words. I'm far too polite to tell someone to shut up or that they're boring, but he really doesn't mince his words.

There's the interaction between the contestants, I can't help but feel that these groups are deliberately arranged so that there are as many clashes of personality as possible. Often these are people who have nothing in common with each other, there are loud-mouths, stay at home Mums, the boring know-it-alls....And when copious amounts of alcohol are added to the mix there are occasional spats, which are always entertaining. Part of each episode is dedicated to the guests rummaging around their host's home, with them often looking in drawers and wardrobes and then having a giggle at what they find. Now, personally, I would blow my top if I found someone in my bedroom, but in Come Dine With Me nothing is sacred, with even knickers being waved in front of the camera.

Of course there is a little cookery in the programme, but very often this is car crash TV and there's very little that gives me inspiration in my kitchen. It is entertaining to hear the guests reactions to the menu, with there normally being at least one that can't even pronounce what they're about to eat, let alone know what it is. It's amusing when someone has taken a great deal of thought into what they're going to serve for one of the guests to turn their nose up before they even get to their hosts house. There's at least one host each week who totally over-reaches themselves and attempts a complex menu, and then fails at producing anything even slightly edible. The contestants that spend half the week crowing about their prowess in the kitchen and then serve up something that wouldn't even make it into a school dinner are among the funniest characters, especially when they don't realise how bad their food is.

As each of the guests gives their reaction to the evening things get even more entertaining. Some are very honest in their ratings, while others are far more calculating, and yet others are scathing in their comments but have said nothing bad to their host's faces. Often there is a great deal of alcohol is consumed during the evening, and this adds to comedy element in watching normally sane and sensible people venting at their hosts, due to the lack of skill in cooking or poor hosting skills, or simply because they didn't get on with the other guests.

Although I do enjoy this and watch it every week day, I do have a couple of problems with the programme. Firstly, the majority of the contestants are middle to upper-middle class, they never seem to be the type that need the £1000, and a great number of them are snobs. A lot of them are also insensitive to the needs of others and think far more of themselves than they should. One particular episode comes to mind where a guest was gluten intolerant and the host simply refused to make any allowances, it's not as if this was a life-style choice, warning was given and others had made suitable adjustments to their menu. But I guess this is part of what makes the programme entertaining, the fact I do get emotionally involved enough to get annoyed at these ignoramuses. I also feel that there is rather too much alcohol consumed considering this is a day-time show, some of the contestants get absolutely bladdered, and again this is entertaining, but when someone's passing out at the table, I think it's gone a little far.

As well as the standard format, there are occasional weeks where the contestants are celebrities who are competing for their favourite charity. The celebrities are never the most famous, but have included Linda Lusardi and some guy from Blue. These are possibly even more entertaining as it's always nice to see how the rich and famous live and eat.

I do find Come Dine With Me addictive and find myself watching it every weekday evening at 5.30pm on Channel 4, and occasionally on More 4 at 2pm. My partner and I also watch it together on Sundays where a whole weeks worth of programmes is shown back-to-back on More 4 in the early evening. But as entertaining as it is to watch the kitchen disasters, back-biting and occasional all-out war, it does get a little repetitive at times, and we don't actually get much inspiration in the kitchen. The recipes for the occasional dish I've thought I'd like to try can be found on the web-site and as the narrator would say 'if you'd like to know HOW to actually cook it' it's better to follow these than trying to copy the contestants.

Come Dine With Me is typical day-time TV, while there's little to interest the avid cook, there's plenty of entertainment, with a voyeuristic look into the homes, behaviour and lives of 'those who dine'. I just wish they would include a few more contestants whose life is more like mine, where I actually have to budget and produce decent meals with a small budget.

Summary: They think they can host, but can they?