Eat Well For Less: the ultimate in love-to-hate TV

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Eat Well For Less: the ultimate in love-to-hate TV

June 23, 2017 - 12:52
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Formulaic television is big business now. Nothing is cheaper and easier to churn out than programmes where essentially the same thing happens, day in day out, week in and week out.

Eat Well For Less

By The TV Grump @TheTVGrump

Formulaic television is big business now. Nothing is cheaper and easier to churn out than programmes where essentially the same thing happens, day in day out, week in and week out.

Come Dine With Me, Four In A Bed, A Place In The Sun, Flog It, Bargain Hunt. The list is almost endless. And what do they all have in common ? Viewers love them. They're loyal to them. They can't get enough of them.

Perhaps the zeitgeist of formulaic tv right now is BBC One's Eat Well For Less. Now in its fourth series, the show combines the current obsession of both food programmes and saving money. A winning format, you might say ? Hmmm ...

Hosted by the ubiquitous Gregg Wallace (don't forget that second 'g' - he gets testy if you do), who has seemingly been granted an entire tv career as a result of shovelling enormous forkfuls of food into his mouth on Masterchef.

Aiding Gregg, and looking like the protagonist from a pre-watershed Guy Richie film, is the engaging Chris Bavin. Liza Tarbuck is also on hand to provide the wonderfully patronising narration.

Eat Well really does take formulaic tv to the nth degree. Each episode follows exactly the same path, with Gregg and Chris helping a frightfully middle class family to reduce their weekly food bill. The climax each week invariably results in the family being shown numerous food items that have been swapped for cheaper versions. The downside being, they do have to visit around five different supermarkets to buy these various items, rendering the whole thing, somewhat pointless.

Can it really be justified though, every week, to choose a family with an average food spend of £10,000-14,000 a year, over a family in real need ? And instead of revealing how they can eat the same old junk, but more cheaply, why not give a vague attempt to live up to the title, and actually concentrate a little on actual nutrition ?

*steps off soapbox*

Even ITV have hitched a trailer up to this bandwagon, with their (not too dissimilar effort) 'Save Money, Good Food'. Here, Susanna Reid chokes back her apparent horror at having to slum it with the great unwashed, whilst rummaging through a chosen family's bins and giving stern lectures on food waste. Chef Matt Tebbutt, in clearly the most useful part of both of these shows, demonstrates recipes the family can use to actively reduce their food bill.

So why do I still come back to Eat Well For Less ? For better or for worse, it's wonderfully cathartic television. You can spend an hour a week ranting and raving, literally shouting out loud at the tv, and afterwards you feel so much better about yourself. Join the hashtag #EatWellForLess on Twitter during the broadcast, and enjoy the palpable sense of viewers readying themselves to throw their television sets out of the window ...

Is it formulaic ? Yes

Do you know how it's going to end ? Yes

Does Greg(g) have a face that you'd never tire of punching? Yes

Will you be watching again next week ? YES !!