Catch up TV: Masterchef, Believe and new Scandi thriller Mammon

Missed the TV moment everyone’s talking about? Alastair McKay looks at the shows you should have watched (and still can) and the upcoming must-sees
Jon √‹igarden og Lena Kristin Ellingsen. Foto NRK
28 March 2014

Unfasten your cummerbunds, MasterChef (BBC iPlayer) is 10 years old. If that feels odd, it’s because the official record-keeping body of the Royal Society of Food Pornographers has chosen to ignore early iterations of the contest, notably the version fronted by Loyd Grossman from the sunset of the Thatcher era, in which regular Joes were invited to cook a gourmet tea using a courgette, an Oxo cube and a lightly poached miners’ lamp.

These days, under the stewardship of John Torode (a chef) and Gregg Wallace (greengrocer, professional roly-poly pudding), lightly-poached miners strive to be Michelin chefs, arranging heritage carrots on oversized plates while stressing about how to deconstruct a beef Wellington to a soundtrack of aftershave rave. The answer (meaty spoiler) is that one should never deconstruct a beef Wellington because it is a pie in disguise.

Actually, the 10th anniversary celebrations were pretty low key. Torode and Wallace have refined their act; wisely, as Wallace was on the verge of becoming a cartoon dumpling. The double-entendres were scarce, unless you counted a flatbread three-ways, and it was nice to see a former UK lindyhop champion making pasta with some instant mashed potato. Can the new MasterChef survive another decade?

Well, the Michelin stuff has a whiff of the Blair era about it, reflecting a time when people were intensely relaxed about aspirational dining: Mary Berry is surely the self-raising queen of the downturn. But as long as MasterChef keeps producing lindyhoppers who can do nimble tricks with a rabbit liver, dear old Gregg will be free to exercise his lexicon of barrow-boy endearments while dreaming of a lovely rhubarb crumble.

The Discovery Channel’s first foray into scripted drama, Klondike (Sky Go) got off to a bad start with a joke in which one gold prospector, struggling up a snowy mountain path, observed: “I feel like that Greek king, pushing that boulder up a hill for eternity. What’s his name? Syphilis?” Happily, the drama was more epic than Sisyphean. The majestic landscapes betrayed the influence of executive producer Ridley Scott, and after a few longeurs, matters perked up considerably with the arrival of Sam Shepard (feisty priest with startled hair) and Tim Roth (Reservoir Husky).

By comparison, Alfonso Cuarón’s supernatural drama Believe (Watch, on Sky Go) seemed slightly limited in its ambitions, despite opening with an impressively claustrophobic car crash. It centres around Bo, a young girl with magical powers, which so far includes mindreading, a keen sense of smell and the ability to scream in such a way that a flock of pigeons will swarm to disarm an attractive female kidnapper with a big gun and a black belt in chopsocky.

Serial box

Is True Detective (Sky Go) losing its way? After that odd diversion with the Texan biker gang, an element of normality was restored this week; normality being the mystery of just why Rust (Matthew McConaughey) is being interrogated about a case in which he was apparently the hero. Clearly, an element of trauma was involved, which means that Rust, instead of being an intuitive detective and all-round existentialist misery-guts, is now an expert in making little men from crushed Lone Star cans. So we know a little more about what happened. And, as the mystery unfurls, care a little less. And a Netflix note: the first two series of American Horror Story are now available. It won Jessica Lange an Emmy and a Golden Globe, and is really quite nasty.

Set the box

Mammon (More4, 9pm, tonight) was a huge hit in Norway, where it was watched by a third of the population. This State of Play-like thriller is the story of two brothers who find themselves on opposite sides of a scandal. It starts with a journalist breaking a story about a financial fraud, only to prompt unexpected consequences. He then attempts to find out what really happened. New Worlds (Channel 4, 9pm, Tuesday) is Peter Flannery’s sequel to The Devil’s Whore, exploring the unpleasant side of the Merry Monarch Charles II. The action is split between 17th century Massachusetts and England. Ben Macintyre re-examines a well-told spy tale in Kim Philby: His Most Intimate Betrayal (BBC2, 9pm, Wednesday/Thursday). And coming next Friday. Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan resume the travelogue they began in The Trip, taking fictionalised versions of themselves on a pasta odyssey in The Trip to Italy (BBC2, 10pm, April 4).

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