Saturday Kitchen

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Saturday Kitchen is a 90 minute cookery programme broadcast which has been broadcast live on BBC One on Saturday mornings. It is currently presented by James Martin; previous presenters have included Antony Worrall Thompson and Gregg Wallace. The programme is currently produced by Cactus TV (perhaps best known for the Richard & Judy show on Channel 4).


Contents

[edit] Beginnings

The first programmes, starting in January 2002 and shown on BBC TWO, were presented by Gregg Wallace and a different celebrity chef each week. A BBC production carrying Open University branding, the programme had an educational remit and a relatively low budget, showing clips of the likes of Keith Floyd and Rick Stein from the BBC archives to fill time.

[edit] 2003-2006 - the Worrall Thompson era

The programmes with Gregg Wallace had been deemed a success, and Saturday Kitchen was relaunched as a major BBC brand. Wallace, at the time relatively unknown, was replaced with an established celebrity chef, Antony Worrall Thompson, helming the show. The format was revamped and, in a bid to secure higher ratings, the programme was switched from BBC TWO to BBC ONE, which had traditionally shown children's programmes in this slot since the early 1970s, a move which courted some controversy. Saturday Kitchen gained a more entertainment-based approach, with the focus moving away from simple suppers and snacks to more aspirational food with a large number of new chefs appearing, many of whom were Michelin-starred.

Until June 2006, the show was produced by Prospect Pictures with each show featuring two guest chefs who demonstrated how to cook a dish of their choosing. The guests and main presenter would also pitch another dish, each to be voted on by the audience by telephone - the winning chef cooked the dish at the end of the show. Worrall Thompson recorded a running total of the number of shows he won on the show by using fridge magnets.

[edit] June 2006 to date

In June 2006 ITV scheduled a similar cooking show in exactly the same time slot as Saturday Kitchen. Worrall Thompson defected from the BBC to present the show, which was titled Saturday Cooks Live! and also made by Prospect Pictures. The format was almost identical to the old style Saturday Kitchen format, but with slightly brasher music and a lime green set. Both Saturday Kitchen and Saturday Cooks Live! started at the same time of day and ran for the same duration, however Saturday Kitchen was watched by up to 5 times as many people as Saturday Cooks Live! and ITV eventually rescheduled Saturday Cooks Live! to a later time slot saying 'their viewers preferred a later timeslot for the show'.

During the 'food fight' ITV tried a number of tricks to try to entice people to turn away from the BBC's Saturday Kitchen, and even posted comments on the BBC's website posing as the producer of Saturday Kitchen to try and convince people into turning over to ITV.

With Worrall Thompson presenting the rival show, the BBC recruited chef James Martin as the new presenter and revamped the format again, switching production duties to Cactus Television. The show currently features a Heaven and Hell element, in which a celebrity guest describes their favourite and loathed foods and the viewers vote for which recipe based on each James Martin will cook at the end of the show. This idea was copied in whole by ITV's Sunday Feast the week before the first Cactus-made Saturday Kitchen aired, allegedly tipped off by an article on the BBC food pages. There is also a section in which guest chefs compete to cook the quickest omelette, times being recorded on a scoreboard by James Martin; this section being clearly borrowed from the BBC's Top Gear.

In February 2007, Saturday Kitchen were accused of misleading viewers to phone in to an apparently live segment, which was found to have been pre-recorded a week earlier.

As well as cookery, the show features a regular wine tasting element, featuring wine experts such as Olly Smith, Tim Atkin, Peter Richards and Susie Barrie. Almost half the show's length is made up of edited versions of food shows from the BBC archives including, amongst others, Gary Rhodes, Keith Floyd, Rick Stein and Delia Smith.

[edit] Guests

Guest chefs who have appeared on Saturday Kitchen include:

A small number of the show's guests are regulars on Ready Steady Cook, including Ready Steady Cook's host Ainsley Harriott.

[edit] External links

  • [1] Saturday Kitchen Website
  • [2] Press release regarding phone-ins scandal
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