Celebrity MasterChef

BBC One

Celebrity MasterChef is by far the most stressful thing on television. The cooking aspect - and the cooking is relentless, the poor contestants cook, cook, cook until their faces are purple with convection heat - is only the half of it. There is also a subliminal music track, quite possibly the bass tone used in olden days to summon up goblins from the netherworld, used here throughout to ratchet up the tension over Wendi Peters's collapsing panna cotta, or to bring into sharp, wince-inducing focus Jayne Middlemiss's fears of being incapable of crafting the perfect pasta.

And then, just when we and the contestants can take no more, on come the judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace, who feel the need to shout obvious and clichéd variations of: “Wendy's REALLY GOT to step her game up”; “Iwan REALLY WANTS THIS, but can he take the pressure?”, “Jayne LITERALLY looks as if she is CRACKING UP”.

If any of us were having to produce three-course meals for top chefs, while Torode and Wallace were shouting inanities and that demented music was playing (at least subliminally) off camera, we'd all crack up. The three contestants in the final (which concludes tonight) - Peters, Middlemiss and the athlete Iwan Thomas - showed remarkable restraint.

This week's final has been orgiastic in scale and continued last night by first going to Morocco, where it rained, so Sir Richard Branson's villa (oh come on, if you go to Morocco to cook, it has to be at Sir Richard's villa!) looked not that beautiful really. The burnished walls were damp, the bright colours were dulled, the swimming pool with petals was pelted by raindrops. Wendi got stressed with pots and pans, Iwan was making a tagine and Jayne was doing dessert. They did very well. At Theo Randall's restaurant they similarly professionally turned out fresh pasta (Iwan), red pepper covered lamb (Jayne) and red mullet (Wendi). Despite excitable Wallace and Torode goading breakdowns to befall them, again they did jolly well.

The final part saw them prepare dishes for a table of top chefs. Jayne did slightly lose it making fresh pasta stuffed with veal, Iwan made an astonishingly good fish stew and Wendy's desserts included the collapsing panna cotta. And so beyond the ridiculous music and braying of the hosts lies the far simpler pleasure of Celebrity Masterchef: the contestants take cooking really seriously. It's not a charade. But it has gone on way too long: tonight's final part of the final is the cherry on top of a week of slightly deranged indulgence. Any more of that tension-maximising deathly bass monotone and the goblins will rise, you shall see.

Psychoville

BBC Two

In Psychoville, the goblins have been running riot for some time. Last night's stunning episode balanced dark drama with dark comedy, leavened with a perfectly pitched, yet subversive, homage to Hitchcock's Rope shot in two long takes. The serial killer obsessed serial killer David (Steve Pemberton) has been killing people, under the evil aegis of mother Maureen (Reece Shearsmith).

It says something about the skill of the men's writing and performance that you look past the grotesque drag of both characters instantly. You laugh at the ridiculous mix of homeliness and psychopathy and at the deliciously childish wordplay, then shudder at the truth of their relationship: incestuous, yes, but their bond - the shady death, finally revealed here, of David's father - was movingly evoked, as was their shared dependence on one another.

The script was devilishly fast and crafty. Mark Gatiss was brilliant as the camp and unknowing interloper bringing the secrets of the past to the surface. He seemed to be a policeman, but wasn't: he was an am-dram devotee after a role, and hopeful that his brazen theatricality would win David and Maureen into casting him in a murder-mystery event. The twist was that they were going to kill him, believing him to be a real policeman, but let him go when they discovered he was not. He was murdered ultimately, having discovered that Maureen had killed David's father, not David (as David had believed). David hadn't known that either.

Matt Lipsey's direction would surely have made The Master proud: in the claustrophobic confines of David and Maureen's scuzzy, blood-spattered flat the camerawork was as unrelenting and viciously playful as the script. The over-stylised, freaky vibe of Psychoville can sometimes appeal only to the dedicated, the horror and comedy too grave-robbingly close to its cousin The League of Gentlemen. However, this episode was supremely classy and stood alone as a fluent, delicious piece of television. Lucky you if you caught it.

tim.teeman@thetimes.co.uk

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