I was going to begin this week with a vitriolic diatribe aimed at that smug and obnoxious **** Gordon Ramsay, but I realised that, as much as he gets my goat, there're only so many asterisks we can use in one column.
Not so long ago, you couldn't turn on the television without seeing Mr Swearypants effing and blinding in the face of some poor soul who had challenged his culinary genius by doing no more than dropping a fork. Ramsay seemed to revel in needlessly humiliating anyone who got in his way, becoming nastier and more spiteful with each new season. Thankfully, the Michelin-starred chef has recently announced he will be bringing to a close the decade-long series Kitchen Nightmares, the show - with a swear count of over 10,000 and counting - in which he has excelled in treating people unpleasantly. Of course, sneering aggression is what the viewing public craves, with Ramsay's on-screen caricature having become ever more exaggerated, but behind the inflated ego there have been glimpses of his softer, more generous side, never more so than in Masterchef US, the fifth season of which begins tonight (above; Star World at 7.50pm).
As Ramsay puts a lid on his explosive temper and tones down the rudeness, the role of villain in the amateur cooking contest falls once again to the intimidating New York restaurateur Joe Bastianich.
What is surprising this year is that the third judge is almost unrecognisable. Tattooed celebrity chef Graham Elliot looks fantastically svelte after shedding a whopping 150 of his nearly 400-pound bulk thanks to some serious dieting and surgery, but his weight loss isn't the only major change to the show.
The audition process has been canned and we kick off in the kitchen, with a pared-down 30 of the "best" home cooks from across America. After all, it's the fabulous cooking that's the heart of the programme and what we tune in to see, with maybe - just maybe - a light sprinkling of Ramsay's acerbic critiquing to flavour our Sunday evenings.
Part of BBC Entertainment's "Crime and Justice Season", the fourth instalment of present-day crime drama Whitechapel begins this Thursday, at 9pm, with the detective team of Joseph Chandler (Rupert Penry-Jones; Spooks) and Ray Miles (Phil Davis; Silk) continuing to battle the evil forces lurking on the streets of London's notorious East End. The gruesome murder of a homeless man, pressed to death like a gothic pancake, leads the police, assisted by historical adviser and self-proclaimed Ripperologist Ed Buchan (Steve Pemberton; The League of Gentlemen), to the Bulgarian secret police and 16th-century witches.