(Note: APEVOCT = “A parent’s eye view of children’s TV”, the overall name of this series).

Big Cook Little Cook is, as the name suggests, a programme based on cooking. This CBeebies regular is based in a cafe staffed by, well, Big Cook and Little Cook. Big Cook, also known as Ben, is a normal sized human, while Little Cook, AKA Small,  is about 12 inches tall. Why Big Cook has a proper name and Little Cook doesn’t is never explained.

The basic plot of each episode is pretty much the same every time. Some fictional character (often from a fairy tale or other traditional literature) visits the cafe, where Ben and Small prepare them an appropriate dish. We never see the visitor themselves in the live action part of the programme – they’re just assumed to be the other side of the serving hatch. When the identity of the visitor is revealed, Small tells a story (illustrated by basic animation) about the visitor in which he appears as a main character, usually as the hero helping the visitor out of a difficult situation. Then the two of them select a recipe from Big Cook’s recipe book, but there’s usually a key ingredient missing so Small flies off on a wooden spoon to obtain it – an action providing a link to an educational insert at a farm or factory telling us more about the food in question. Having retrieved the ingredient, Big Cook prepares the dish (with minimal help from Small) and serves it to the visitor.

So far, so good. I like the idea of teaching children about the concepts of basic cookery, and it certainly has its good points, from an educational perspective.  However, given that this involves cookery, it’s not something that most pre-school children can do on their own – in fact, there are often times when Big Cook explicitly tells his viewers that they should get their adult helper to do something for them (such as put something in the oven, or open a tin). So for this to work best, it needs to be the sort of programme where parents and children can watch together, and then go away afterwards and put into practice what they’ve just seen.  And there’s a really, really big problem in this respect. The elephant in the room, so to speak, is the fact that the programme is hideously unwatchable for anyone with a mental age of more than about six. If the food was as overcooked as Ben and Small are overacted, then all they’d ever serve up would be cinders. And the characters aren’t portrayed sympathetically – Small, in particular, with his “I’m the hero” stories and his incessant “can we play now?” requests comes across as an arrogant, insufferable little prick. If I found him in my kitchen while I was trying to cook something, he’d be straight out through the catflap. Meanwhile, the special effects required to make a full-size and a 12-inch human appear together in the same room have all the realism of a 1960s episode of Lost In Space, and the programme is topped and tailed by the kind of irritatingly catchy songs that make you want to wash your ears out with soap to stop you thinking about them.

So, unfortunately, despite the best of intentions, this has to go down as  a Fail, in my opinion. I am aware of the existance of an alternate point of view, but then for every opion someone is bound to hold the opposite. Some people like fleas, as well.

Random APEVOCT Fact: Ben and Small are played by Stephen Marsh and Dan Wright, who have alternate real lives as comedians.