Great British Menu - TV review

The positions on the podium are clear,

. In the cut-throat arena of cooking shows, Masterchef will always romp home with the gold, and Great British Menu (BBC 2) will come in a worthy second place.

We'll leave Jamie Oliver, Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsay to fight it out for bronze.

GBM will never be able to compete with the might of Masterchef, and yet it remains a firm favourite with us couch-potato cooks.

And now it's back for a new series – this time centred around a spectacular Olympics-themed banquet, with a shiny new 7.30pm prime time slot.

So what delights do the professional chefs have in store for us this time around?

Pigeon heart and stinging nettle foam, that's what. Hmm, where's that Domino's pizza menu?

At least the chewy little heart was served up speared on a javelin (!), in keeping with the Olympic theme.

Yep, the three Scottish chefs battling it out in last night's opening episode offered up a, shall we say, interesting selection of starters, one of which ended up being described as a "big slab of cold braised meat".

Yummy.

It was Alan Murchison, Colin Buchan and Mark Greenaway who were tasked with creating a four-course menu that "takes food to new heights" and honours our Olympians.

Respectively they cooked up duck terrine, smoked pigeon with heart and nettle foam and cold pork and apple.

Alan and, somewhat controversially, heart-loving Colin both were scored seven for their starters by top dog Jeremy Lee, while Mark ended up with a lowly five.

Now, any GBM fan worth their fancy sea salt knows that the four preliminary rounds of starter, fish course, main course and dessert are nothing but mere half-hour distractions until the real business starts on Friday.

That's when evil-yet-brilliant judges Matthew Fort, Pru Leith and Oliver Peyton dissect the meals our chefs have shed blood, sweat and tears over throughout the past week and either rip them to shreds or gobble them up in glee.

If we're honest, the whole thing could be served up in one weekly episode of no more than 60 minutes, and these individual-course programmes can drag a fair bit.

But, we GBM addicts need our fix – maybe just lay off the pigeon heart, eh?