If telly and food have one thing in common, it’s the importance of comfort. French onion soup, shepherd’s pie, sticky toffee pudding; all classic comfort foods. As a three-course meal, they might be accompanied by some nice comfort viewing, like the BBC’s cookery contest MasterChef, an hour-long hug of a show that returns this week. But, in the wake of allegations made against presenter Gregg Wallace and his co-anchor John Torode, which have resulted in the corporation severing ties with both men, this usually reassuring series is tinged with a strange, bitter aftertaste.
When reports about Wallace’s alleged misconduct broke last November, the BBC was still filming its latest competition, the 21st series of the show to air since it was revived in 2005. Wallace immediately announced that he would step aside from presenting during the investigation, with chef and former MasterChef: The Professionals judge Anna Haugh taking his place in the final episodes. Last month, following the conclusion of the investigation, Wallace was sacked, with his co-host, Australian-born chef Torode, also axed after scrutiny on the show’s workplace culture unearthed an instance of racist language. This series – already filmed (and largely edited) by the time Wallace and Torode received their P45s – looked doomed. Yet, despite one contestant, Sarah Shafi, requesting that the show be scrapped (she eventually agreed to be edited out of it instead), the BBC has gone ahead with the broadcast.
It makes for uncomfortable viewing. MasterChef is not thrill-a-minute television. It is a gentle, reliable programme that viewers have on in the background while doing the washing up after dinner. Recent series have run for 24 episodes, broadcast in three-episode tranches over a couple of months, meaning that the contestants – alongside Wallace and Torode – spend much of the late summer living in our houses. With Wallace and Torode both appearing here, condemned yet oblivious, that easy, ambient watching feels marred. Wallace cuts a distinctive figure on TV. Now, his broad, toadish smile evokes not just his cheeky greengrocer persona but the long index of allegations about inappropriate behaviour. Viewers (even Wallace’s defenders) will be preternaturally alert to any sense that he is straying towards that dreaded “banter”. “Your girlfriend is a Disney princess?!” he marvels at a young cook at one point. “Yeah,” the contestant replies. “It’s a tough life, Gregg.”
Clearly no line is crossed in an exchange like that, yet the reports that have surfaced over the past year have transformed that genial rapport into a warning sign. An amber flag, if you will. “Oh God, that was stressful,” a young challenger, Thea, says, pulling a face after a brief interaction with Wallace at the kitchen counter. It is the light, breezy comment that contestants have always made, yet it is also something that you can imagine being spoken in a more troubling context. Some viewers would never notice that, while others’ minds will be drawn to it. It is indicative of the tension facing the BBC.
There was no easy way out of this mess. To abandon the series would be to privilege the BBC’s reputation over the hard work of not only the contestants, but a large cast and crew who stretch far beyond the show’s two hosts (though when the credits roll and “John Torode MBE” and “Gregg Wallace MBE” get top billing, it is a salient reminder of how deeply embedded in the establishment bad behaviour is). Airing this series was a risk, yet the most striking thing is the uncanny normality of these new episodes. The allegations were looming, and yet filming went on. The result is something that, on the surface, feels inoffensively bland. An illustration, then, of how a toxic culture can seemingly hide in the plainest of plain sight.
