After prolonged debate, it was decided in late July that series 21 of MasterChef would air<\/a>, despite its being mired in scandal, because otherwise it wouldn\u2019t be fair to the contestants (although one of them asked to be edited out anyway). Now the day is upon us for the first episode, and the first three are already on iPlayer. \u201cSo weird\u2026 this is weird,\u201d says contestant Thea, right at the beginning, of being in the MasterChef kitchen. Yep, us too, Thea (get that editor another drink!). But once you get over the initial weirdness, it\u2019s business as usual, and though there is perhaps marginally less presenter action, if you hadn\u2019t read the news you\u2019d be hard pushed to notice that anything had changed.<\/p>\n The trouble is that everyone has read the news. And whatever your views on Gregg Wallace and John Torode, who have helmed the programme for 21 years, the simple facts of the case make everything feel rather loaded. To recap: Wallace stepped aside from the show in November 2024 after a BBC News investigation in which 13 people accused him of making inappropriate sexual comments. He was then formally sacked in early July following a report that upheld 45 complaints against him, including one of unwelcome physical contact and three of being in a state of undress (he was cleared of several more serious allegations).<\/p>\n When the story broke late last year, Torode sought to distance himself from Wallace, and kept his presenting role on the upcoming celebrity version \u2013 but then the report found that a complaint against Torode, for using the N-word on set<\/a>, had also been upheld. Torode said he had no recollection of the incident (and he was cleared of nine other allegations involving abusive, racist and sexual language). BBC Director General Tim Davie said the organisation was \u201cdrawing a line in the sand\u201d, and after, it seems, protracted negotiations<\/a> with the production company, Banijay, Torode was for the chop a couple of weeks later.<\/p>\n All of which plays on your mind while you\u2019re watching. How could it not? Torode and Wallace have reportedly turned on each other, so their light professional rapport, no doubt genuine at the time of filming, now feels odd. When Wallace chats to 70-year-old Penelope, who\u2019s a dab hand with a hogget shank, or even anxious, butter-loving 40-year-old Beth, you can\u2019t help but wonder if he\u2019s rolling his eyes at \u201cwomen of a certain age\u201d.<\/p>\n For fans of the show, this creates cognitive dissonance in exactly the environment that you don\u2019t want it (just imagine how this year\u2019s contestants feel). Torode has always seemed, to me, a good guy, supportive and empathetic to contestants; while it\u2019s easier to imagine Gregg saying, for example, a dish \u201ctastes like [his] aunt\u2019s vagina\u201d, it\u2019s still difficult to reconcile the deep levels of discomfort and distress he\u2019s caused people while unwittingly enjoying his anodyne cheeky chappy persona. (This becomes easier when you consider the ungracious way he has handled the allegations since they emerged.) Of course, this is exactly the argument for why the series shouldn\u2019t have been aired.<\/p>\n All of that said,\u00a0MasterChef\u00a0has such a familiar rhythm that it doesn\u2019t take that long to zone out the noise and get into\u00a0the meat of\u00a0it. It\u2019s welcome to see last year\u2019s finalists, Brin Pirathapan, Louise Lyons Macleod and Chris Willoughby (whose profession was memorably described at the time as \u201cfirebreathing pig\u201d) in the third-round dining room, judging dishes for a place in the quarter final, and it\u2019s welcome, as always, to have your mind soothed with talk of mousselines, ganache and a nefarious \u201ccrumb\u201d. The heats \u2013 of which there are very many \u2013 follow the same format they have for years: \u201cBasic to Brilliant\u201d, the invention test and the two-course dining room challenge. As ever, MasterChef delights us with the perfect blend of comfort and surprise (sorrel and goat\u2019s cheese with watermelon and wasabi?! Well I never).<\/p>\n One novelty is the increasing number of contestants who get into food through the internet, like this year\u2019s Shaun, who has never eaten Hainanese chicken rice, but decided to make it after seeing a video online, and nabs himself high praise from Wallace and Torode and a spot in the next round as a result. Social media is not just inspirational, either, but aspirational \u2013 32-year-old Gemma \u201cdreams of travelling the world making food-based social media content\u201d, and Pirathapan, last year\u2019s winner, says his life since lifting the trophy has involved plenty of \u201ccontent creation\u201d.<\/p>\n Yet for us viewers, watching reels on Instagram still doesn\u2019t hit the MasterChef mark. As formulaic as it is, I\u2019ve learned so much about food watching it \u2013 plus, its high stakes, high emotions and, yes, highly skilled presenters, make it excellent telly. It\u2019s far from the most important thing to come out of all this, but I can\u2019t help but feel a bit sad on multiple levels that MasterChef \u2013 both now and in future, when new presenters are decided \u2013 has lost some of that familiarity and comfort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mired in scandal, the first episode of the new series airs tonight, with sacked presenters Gregg Wallace and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,647,391,27061,27062,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-48494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-masterchef","tag-tv","tag-tv-opinion","tag-tv-reviews","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"TX](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_261327803.jpg\")
The contestants from episode one (Photo: BBC\/Shine TV)<\/p>\n![\"TX](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_261327855.jpg\")
Penelope makes hogget shank (Photo: BBC\/Shine TV)<\/p>\n![\"TX](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/SEI_261328037.jpg\")
Last year\u2019s finalists make a welcome return (Photo: BBC\/Shine TV)<\/p>\n