DEBORAH ROSS: After lovely Rahul, some very thin gruel
The Great British Bake Off
Channel 4
I’ll Get This
Tuesday, BBC2
Rating: 
The Little Drummer Girl
Sunday, BBC1
Rating: 
First, if tardily, congratulations to Rahul Mandal, winner of this year’s The Great British Bake Off whose triumph surely represents a victory for shy, reserved, depressive pessimists everywhere (indeed, when his name was announced, I would have leapt from the sofa and performed a victory dance but what if I slipped and cracked my head on the coffee table? What if I put my back out?). Someone has already joked that his first cook book will be titled: This Is So Bad, I’m A Disgrace, I’m So Sorry, I’m So Sorry and as for the recipes, they would surely come with the instruction: ‘I wouldn’t make this, it’s awful, sigh.’ I would buy that book and not bother, just like I’ve bought many cookery books and not bothered. But this time we’d both know I’m not going to bother. It could be a bestseller…
Rylan Clark-Neal on I’ll Get This. The show promised to be ‘hilarious’ and ‘revealing’, but we’ll be the judge of that
Rahul, 30, is an engineering researcher, and he became the nation’s sweetheart not just because he’s a genius baker but because there is nothing about him that smacks of self-regard. Loving yourself extravagantly was once seen as shameful but now it’s the trait du jour. The Apprentice, for instance, doesn’t want to know about anything else. But then Rahul bumbled along to remind us that humility and modesty still exist (I’d begun to wonder). I look forward to whatever he does next but would especially like him to take charge of a problem page for shy, reserved, depressive pessimists. ‘Dear Rahul, I’ve met a lovely man but I’ve been hurt in relationships before. Should I take the risk? From Pat.’ ‘Dear Pat, best not.’ ‘Dear Rahul, does a game show based on celebrities eating a fancy dinner sound like a goer? From BBC’. ‘Dear BBC, sorry, sorry, but it sounds like a terrible idea, sorry.’ He would often be right on the money too.
The celebrity dinner party game show is I’ll Get This where, needless to say, there is no shortage of self-regard on display. The deal is: five celebrities (in the first episode they were Anton Du Beke, Carol Vorderman, Ed Gamble, Ellie Taylor and Rylan Clark-Neal) gather in a restaurant’s private dining room and all put their credit cards in the centre of the table. They then play games to win them back, with the total bill going on whichever card is left at the end. The show promised to be ‘hilarious’ and ‘revealing’, but we’ll be the judge of that.
There was some banter but it was thin gruel, and chummily smug. As for the revelations, if you were interested in them will have depended on whether you consider them revelations in the first instance. Anton likes turbot, we discovered. Rylan likes his steak ‘cremated’. Ellie doesn’t like pears. ‘I don’t trust them. They look like funny apples.’ And Carol has won Rear Of The Year not once but twice (she corrected Rylan who had it down as once). Meanwhile, the ‘games’ were all banal quizzes. Plus there is one fundamental flaw to this whole enterprise. Ed lost and had to pay nearly £600, but he had, presumably, been paid to be there. So not a crushing financial blow, really. The teaser at the opening showed that more celebrities are about to truck up, including Richard Madeley and Julian Clary, who is seen asking, ‘Has my career come to this?’ For the moment, it looks that way, mate. Sorry. Or sorry, sorry, sorry, as Rahul would say.
I am working hard at the latest John le Carré adaptation, The Little Drummer Girl. I watched the first episode twice and the second episode twice. It is still complex and also sometimes hokey. Charlie breaks down and agrees to spy for the Israelis because, in effect, they discovered her bourgeois past? In torture terms, this is the equivalent of feet-tickling. But I’m liking it more and more, particularly the dresses – Charlie wore that yellow one for so long I was worried they weren’t letting her shower – and the chance to see Zoom ice-lollies again after all these years.
It’s still not sexy or dramatic and it looks set to become a brooding love story rather than an exciting thriller but I’m too far in to turn back now. Others may feel differently. Last week I said this would be a critical success but is too densely plotted to be a popular success and I stand by that. The first episode was seen by 5.9 million and although, at the time of writing, the viewing figures for episode two have yet to appear, I’m predicting a fall of a million or so. Risky, but I’ll eat my hat if it’s otherwise, and I don’t even own a hat. I’ll have to buy one. So I hope I’m right or that’s going to be a faff.
