It's not 'Hell's Kitchen', but these chefs need to turn up the heat

TV REVIEW:THE OPENING episodes of the much-hyped MasterChef Ireland(RTÉ2, Tuesday and Thursday) – the presenters Dylan McGrath and Nick Munier have been looming over me from bus stops for weeks – weren't the tickle-your-palette amuse-bouche I'd expected.

Though, to be fair, the audition stages in all these reality programmes can be on the dull side. Even on the ratings juggernaut that is

The X Factor

(UTV and TV3, Saturday), now that we’ve become used to the new judging panel (how quickly we’ve forgotten Simon, Danni and Cheryl), it feels a bit of a slog.

The X Factor

bootcamp can’t come fast enough, if only to give the judges a chance to pull themselves together. Even Louis Walsh has started crying now.

Things were much more measured in the swanky MasterChef Irelandstudio – maybe too measured. Both McGrath and Munier looked smart, but they were as bland as blancmange. And while no one wants ever again to see the shouty, angry McGrath that was revealed in that behind-the-scenes programme about his former restaurant a couple of years ago, a bit of spark would have helped.

Viewers need a continuous fix of will-they-or-won’t-they tension in an audition programme, but none of the contestants was truly dire or having a nightmare of a day at the chopping-board. And, let’s face it, it’s the disasters at the audition stage that provide the entertainment.

Still, while the taster episodes were on the boring side, the overall package is more than promising. The programme looks great, the production values are clearly top-notch, and some characters are already emerging as ones to watch and cheer for, while Munier and McGrath will surely loosen up a bit.

IT MIGHTeven become as compelling as The Great British Bake Off(BBC2, Tuesday), the competition for amateur bakers that's as good as it gets for a bit of escapist viewing of a wintry September night. The judges – pearls-and-twinset cake queen Mary Berry and macho baker Paul Hollywood – are brilliant and tough: there's nothing sugar-coated in their "what a mess" and "that tastes horrible" adjudications. This week was the biscuit round, and for a full hour viewers escaped into a world where "disciplining the macaroons" was an urgent issue and where "Ben's ginger nuts were far too hot" and "Holly's biscotti needed attention" were the most pressing problems. The high praise included admiration for one contestant's "very professional shake of the tray". Next week it's pies – can't wait.

TV3'S PR MACHINEwas in such overdrive about Ursula Halligan's The Rise and Fall of Fianna Fáil(TV3, Monday) that by time it appeared on screen, all the top-line soundbites that you might tune in for and be surprised by had been well aired: Bertie Ahern referring to some party footsoldiers as "useless good-for-nothings"; Seán Haughey saying his father Charles Haughey's "personal lifestyle" was his major character flaw; and Bertie's ex-partner Celia Larkin saying he viewed power as "notches on a bedpost" – not the best image to carry around in your head.

To make a three-part documentary on such a complex, sprawling subject and to do it justice would need a major budget, and this looked cheap. There were too few interviews – all looking as if they were shot in the same hotel – and each one was cut up into soundbites and sprinkled throughout. And the whole thing lacked focus. It was as if, in episode one at least, that once Bertie Ahern (filmed mostly in a graveyard, which was truly weird) and Celia Larkin came on board, all idea of doing an in-depth, investigative history of Fianna Fáil was abandoned in favour of the Bertie and Celia show.

Even the timeline was peculiar: grainy shots of de Valera addressing rallies in the 1920s followed, just a few minutes later, by a close-up of Celia talking about Bertie, and then back to more archive footage.

BEFORE THE SCREENINGof the drama of the week, Appropriate Adult(UTV, Sunday), there was controversy over whether a drama should even be made about such a shocking case as that of the serial murderer Fred West and whether it risked in some way glamorising him by putting him in the spotlight at the expense of his many, many victims. The writer Neil McKay (who also wrote the award-winning Mo) had the inspired idea of viewing the terrible events that took place in Gloucestershire in 1994, and the police investigation which followed, through the eyes of Janet Leach (Emily Watson), a housewife and student social worker who became involved in the investigation through her role as a volunteer "appropriate adult" – a person asked by the police to sit in on interviews with minors or vulnerable adults in order to assist them and safeguard their rights.

Except Fred West (played by Dominic West, who was unrecognisable from his suave role in T he Hour) wasn't vulnerable at all. Manipulative, certainly: in some of the drama's most chilling moments (and there were many of them) he told a clearly out-of-her-depth Leach where more bodies were buried, knowing that she couldn't break confidentiality and tell the police.

The drama took it as given that he was evil. I didn’t expect to laugh, but I did, often, at West’s matter-of-factness and the way he spoke. Confessing to the murder of his daughter and detailing what he did with the body, he said in a way so glib it was oddly comical: “I thought I’d put her in the Wendy house and then I thought I’d put her in the dustbin.” This required cutting her up so she’d fit. “I closed her eyes,” he said before conversationally adding, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world, “’cos you’re not going to take a saw to your daughter if she’s looking at you.”

Written down, those lines look horrific and the last thing you’d find funny, but, as spoken by Dominic West, who studied the police tapes to catch Fred West’s delivery, they were. While West and Watson where superb and deeply credible (though, uncharacteristically, Watson’s accent was all over the place), it was Monica Dolan as the foul-mouthed Rose West who was most mesmerising to watch, even though in the first part of the drama (it concludes tomorrow night) she had little screen time.

Those tuning in for blood and gore will have been disappointed. There were no bodies and little overt detail of the horrors that went on in that suburban house in Gloucestershire. It was all hinted at or made reference to in the subtle direction. And the art direction was brilliant. You could nearly smell the damp and moral decay in that house on Cromwell Road.

Get stuck into . . .

Strictly Come Dancing

(BBC1, tonight)

Nancy Dell’Olio (pictured), Anita Dobson, Lulu – a big shout-out for the mature glam ladies dominating this year’s line-up of twinkle-toed contestants.