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MasterChef review – the BBC’s disgraced cookery show is warmer, sharper and funnier than ever | MasterChef

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MasterChef is back, emboldened by the strange and giddy euphoria of an enforced refresh. For nigh on 20 years, the BBC’s premier cookery contest was judged by John Torode and Gregg Wallace and was just sort of … there. Not bad, but not very exciting either. That the hosts might have become a little crusty and stale wasn’t widely noticed or discussed.

One unsavoury year of allegations, investigations and cancellations later, not one but both of the show’s long-serving overlords have abruptly departed. Yet there’s something freeing about an unplanned change and MasterChef, happily, has embraced that by hiring two relatively low-profile women to replace the old men: season 22 is brought to you by Myrtle chef patron Anna Haugh and Guardian restaurant critic Grace Dent.

It’s a risk. Dent and Haugh have long media careers behind them and have previously filled in as judges in the MC universe, but their debut as captains of the flagship is a step up. More famous names were surely available. The early signs, however, are that MasterChef has emerged from disgrace with a clean pair of heels. It’s warmer, funnier, sharper.

There are blips of first-night awkwardness, regular rookie-host stuff that time will smooth: Haugh does a wide-eyed half-smile when a contestant is outlining their intentions that sometimes makes her look as if she’s nervously humouring a maniac, while Dent wrestles with the ancient conundrum of what to do with your hands when you’re standing still with nothing to lean on. The fact that generic reaction shots – encouraging but not simpering! Neither a grin nor a scowl! – are about 40% of the job is another challenge.

But Haugh and Dent have the important things nailed, beginning with the unique dynamic to which MasterChef judges adhere. They’re both experts but only one is a chef, so one’s more expert than the other. The non-chef can’t fully defer and has to give their own insights, but without overstepping – waiting for the boss to go first and mopping up any leftover observations is the secret to navigating that. Haugh and Dent’s balance is spot-on and, since the obvious way for the secondary judge to earn their corn is to be good at phrasing their reactions to the food, hiring a professional food critic for the job makes sense. While all that’s going on, the judges must remember that there aren’t any traditional presenters alongside them to put the contestants at ease, so they can’t be aloof: in Great British Bake Off terms, they are simultaneously Mel and Sue and Paul and Mary.

This is where the newcomers really improve on the old team. Haugh is friendly and not afraid to joke with a contestant or express delight – so far her two favourite things seem to be precise timekeeping, and butter – but her experience is formidable. She will look you in the eye and tell you without pity that your vanilla and tahini cream has split, or that you should have binned your runny hollandaise and started again, instead of trying to rescue it with late, raw flour. With more licence to entertain, Dent never pulls focus from the cooking but does hint at a conspiratorial rapport with the contestants, often looking as if she is suppressing a laugh or a camp snarl.

As well as the show now enjoying more rewarding interactions between judges and amateur cooks, the move away from middle-aged male figureheads allows for hosts who simply look more interesting on screen in what is, after all, a visual medium. Contrasting with Haugh’s pristine chef’s whites is Dent’s lacquered quiff, chunky jewellery and cocktail-dress combo, a mid-century glam aesthetic that was almost entirely absent from the Wallace era.

The best thing you can say about MC’s new MCs, though, is that they’ve clearly got this whole thing under control, so we can stop worrying about them and concentrate on episode one’s first steps towards awarding this year’s MasterChef trophy. The battle for that coveted chrome coil starts with an eclectic half-dozen hopefuls who bring Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Nepali and Caribbean flavours, which mix easily with standard British fare: there are lentil and onion fritters (“bullets of joy”, says Dent) and chicken and cabbage jhol momo, and steak and chips and sponge cake, too.

Without much time to get to know anyone – two of the six cooks are gone for ever by the end of the second challenge, a poached-egg brunch – the show is skilled at sketching personalities, from relatively new cook Matt, who doesn’t seem a likely winner since a lot of his home cooking is for his dog, to Sabina, who tears up when she explains how she’s honouring generations of family culinary knowhow. They, and MasterChef, feel as if they’re being cared for a little better now.

MasterChef aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now.



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Ukraine war briefing: Moped ban in Crimea as official says noise is Kyiv plot using youth | Ukraine

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  • Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, has banned riding moped scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles at night-time, saying they sound like ⁠drone attacks and suggesting children are doing it deliberately at Kyiv’s behest. Sergei ​Aksyonov, the Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied peninsula, said the ban would be in place between 8pm and 6am from Wednesday onwards.

  • Oleg Kryuchkov, Aksyonov’s adviser, claimed ‌separately on Telegram: “The enemy is recruiting your children for night-time ridesThe moped ⁠noise hampers the work of defence systems. Their engines sound similar [to drones].” ​Ukraine has recently intensified drone attacks on Crimea, nominally the home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet – targeting the peninsula’s supply routes and triggering a fuel crisis. A limit of 20 litres (5.3 gallons) of fuel per car at petrol stations would continue, Mikhail Razvozhayev, ​the governor of Crimea’s biggest city, Sevastopol, posted on Tuesday. Long lines of motorists queueing in Russian-controlled Crimea, southern Krasnodar region in Russia proper, and elsewhere underscore the sensitive domestic fallout from Ukraine’s strikes.

  • A Ukrainian drone attack started a fire at the refinery that is the ⁠largest fuel supplier to the Moscow region, and two industry sources told Reuters that it had halted operations. The strike on Gazprom Neft’s refinery in south-east Moscow on Tuesday damaged a primary refining facility that accounts ⁠for 53% of the plant’s capacity. Emergency services said the ⁠fire was put out and did not affected operations – information that was contradicted by Reuters sources. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, said the Moscow refinery was hit from a distance of 500km (310 miles). “This is a just response to Russian strikes – and to the dragging out of a war that must be ended.” Gazprom Neft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

  • The US could soon reinstate sanctions on Russian oil shipments, Donald Trump indicated, as leaders at the G7 summit moved on Tuesday to put the war in Ukraine back on top of their agenda. Trump said the sanctions on Russia – partly waived by the US due to the Iran war, ostensibly to help lower oil prices – can go back in place as more oil moves through the strait of Hormuz. “Soon we’ll be able to do that because the oil is now flowing. We’re in a position to do that soon.”

  • Russia should make peace with Ukraine, the US president said after a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy. “Look, Russia should make a deal,” Trump told reporters, adding that too many young men were dying on the battlefield on both sides. “I’m gonna do whatever I can.” The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said of Trump’s statement: “I found him to be very cooperative, and ‌I also saw him listening very attentively. And ‌in that respect, once again, it gives me a certain degree of optimism that we here, as Europeans and as Americans, are now doing everything we can, together, to end the war.”

  • A Ukrainian ⁠Su-24M bomber aircraft crashed on a mission in ⁠the Khmelnitskyi region ⁠in ​western Ukraine on Tuesday ⁠and its two-member crew was killed, ⁠the Ukrainian ​air ‌force said. Ukraine is estimated to have about a dozen of the ageing SU-24 family of warplanes. They are used to launch the Scalp/Storm Shadow cruise missiles supplied by Britain and France.

  • Russian strikes on Ukraine killed at least eight people on Tuesday, officials said. A drone strike in Nikopol, central Dnipropetrovsk region, killed “a mother and son – a woman of 87 and a 51-year-old man” as well as a third person not immediately identified, said the regional governor, Oleksandr Hanzha. “The enemy targeted people ‌walking along the road with an FPV ​drone,” Oleksandr Hanzha said on Telegram. He posted a ​blurred photo ​of a ​wheelchair on ​a ‌road and ​what appeared ​to be a body underneath.

  • Russian shelling of the Donetsk region city of Sloviansk killed three people, while drone strikes on the southern Kherson region killed two people and wounded 16, according to officials. Five Russian ⁠attacks on the ⁠south-eastern Ukrainian ⁠city of ​Zaporizhzhia left one ⁠person dead, three injured and set ablaze ⁠a ​home ‌and a ‌shopping centre, ‌said Ivan Fedorov, the regional governor.

  • Repairs to the nearly 1,000-year-old Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv could take around two years, an official said ⁠on Tuesday. A ⁠Russian attack on ​the complex set fire to the roof of the Dormition Cathedral within ⁠the vast Unesco world heritage site. More than ‌80% of the 11th-century cathedral’s roof had been damaged, but firefighters managed to prevent the fire from spreading inside the cathedral, Maksym Ostapenko, director general of the complex, was cited as saying by Interfax Ukraine news agency.

  • A Russian artist critical of Vladimir Putin and the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, has been shot and killed in ⁠the eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska, a prosecutor has said. Local media identified the victim as Robert ⁠Kuzovkov, who was also known by his artistic pseudonym, Semyon Skrepetsky. Pjotr Sauer writes that five shots were fired at the ⁠victim, including one ⁠to the head, in the attack on Monday, ​according to Marcin Kozak, a spokesperson for the district prosecutor in Lublin. Two Belarusians ⁠had been detained but no one had yet been charged. Other Russian exiles suspected Kadyrov was responsible.

  • The Chinese ⁠embassy ​in London said it had complained to British ⁠authorities about sanctions on several entities, including four from ⁠China, for allegedly supplying key military equipment ​to Russia. “China has consistently promoted peace talks and strictly ​controlled exports of dual-use goods,” an embassy spokesperson said. “Normal exchanges and cooperation between China and Russia should ⁠not be disrupted or affected.” Britain’s latest sanctions ​package, ​announced on Tuesday, includes cracking down on ​third-​country suppliers of critical military equipment to Russia in China, Thailand and Turkey.

  • The US extended by 15 days until 1 July a sanctions waiver on Serbia’s Russian-controlled oil company NIS, allowing it to continue importing and processing crude, the firm said. Washington has demanded since early 2025 that Russia’s sanctioned Gazprom Neft sell it stake in NIS, which has been threatened by US financial sanctions that have been repeatedly postponed. Talks on the sale of the Russian-held stake in NIS to Hungary’s MOL energy company have gone on for months, with the US Treasury’s foreign assets control office extending the deadline for their completion until 16 June.



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    Streeting would 'be prepared' to trigger leadership contest as early as next week

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    But the former health secretary told BBC Newsnight he would prefer for the prime minister “to take a decision on his own terms”.



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    Argentina v Algeria: World Cup 2026 – live | World Cup 2026

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    Key events

    32 mins: Algeria get on the ball in Argentina’s half for the first time in ages. They work the ball from side to side then look to attack down the right but Almada tracks back effectively.

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