The Big Family Cooking Showdown review: Gentle and undramatic telly but the grub looked good

It lacks the drama and chemistry of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ but the BBC’s new competitive cooking show is heart-warming, cosy television

Lift off: Rosemary Shrager, Nadiya Hussain, Zoe Ball and Giorgio Locatelli front the new programme (BBC)

Since Love Productions sold The Great British Bake Off to Channel 4 last year, the BBC has been preparing its response. The Big Family Cooking Showdown is part of the answer and like its juggernaut of a predecessor, the new show is gentle, uplifting telly – just the sort of antidote we need with impending nuclear war and Mo Farah retiring.

Going on this opener, and I know it’s very early days, I’m not convinced it will have the special chemistry that came with Mary, Paul and Mel and Sue, but that took a while before the public noticed and it started clocking up more than 10 million viewers an episode – the first series only had around three million tuning in – so for now take this as it is; a very watchable cooking show that if nothing else, will inspire you to get the family in the kitchen.

Likeable, smiley former GBBO winner Nadiya Hussain is joined by likeable, smiley Zoe Ball to present this 12-part competition. 16 family groups of three are competing to become the UK’s best family of cooks. With Paul Hollywood jumping ship and Mary Berry judging new series Britain’s Best Cook (to be presented by Claudia Winkleman and a show I suspect will be closer to Bake Off than this), the judges here are cookery teacher Rosemary Shrager and Italian Michelin-starred chef Giorgio Locatelli.

“The most important thing is to see them cooking with joy, that’s what home cooking is all about,” said Giorgio. Got that? Joy, not soggy bottom-related stress.

Instead of the Bake Off tent, there’s a barn conversion with a country-kitchen-meets-early-Noughties-warehouse-conversion vibe. There is lots of wood, exposed brick, shiny copper lampshades and those letters with light bulbs that you tend to see at weddings. It’s all kind of a mess, like bits of this show, but it also somehow works.

Scandi drama: the Marks family serve up Swedish family favourites to the judges

There are three rounds. The first requires feeding a family of four for a tenner, the second involves whipping up a main course and dessert in one of the group’s own kitchens – very Come Dine With Me – and the third is called “Impress the Neighbours”, with contestants given 135 minutes to create a starter and main. Rather than getting Bob and Jane round from next door, it’s Rosemary and Giorgio who get the spoils.

We met the Charles family from Yorkshire, who in their wisdom, had decided on making a risotto for the top Italian chef. Then there was the London-based Marks family, serving up their Swedish family favourites to the judges.

With an individual cooking show, you get to know the contestants over the weeks and come to anticipate their idiosyncrasies and isms. Here it’s hard to develop relationships with people that you meet once then, if they make it through, weeks later in the semi-final. Still, there were some memorable moments, not least from Torun, the 86-year-old Marks matriarch, a four-times-married former model who loved to dance.

“I just want to be the star, my dear,” she said as her daughter and grandson stirred around her.

The judges were very kind in this opener: “To be overcomplicated, it was my great worry, I think maybe I’ve been proved wrong,” said Giorgio on the Charles’s ingredient-packed risotto. I could listen to his back-to-front syntaxes all day. Rosemary gave me my Mary Berry posh fix. “It’s rare-ly, rare-ly good,” she said, often. Nadiya and Zoe are both pros at geeing people up. Nadiya particularly is very warm, going in for group hugs with the families and nosing around their homes to get them to dish the dirt.

The food looked mouth-watering, I’ve got my eye on the Charles’ spatchcocked ginger chicken with Bengal-spiced squash that they made in the kitchen round (of course there’s an accompanying book).

As it went on, the judges seemed increasingly impressed. There was very little drama despite the Bake Off-esque stirring score whipping things along. Oskar from the Marks family did some ropey fish skinning and the Charles had a few timing issues but that was about as dramatic as it got.

Giorgio declared Oskar’s cod dish “technically perfect” and the Charles’s pasta dish also got the P-word. Perfection in the first round! Really? The Charles’s marsala sauce had separated, leaving the veal dish “greezie” for Giorgio’s tastes, but the greasiness didn’t put him off as it was the Yorkshire lot who made it into the semi-finals.

As they hugged, kissed and shed a tear or two, it was hard not to share in their undramatic, very human joy. A feeling any GBBO fan will recognise.