Million Pound Menu: It’s Reservoir Dogs torturing Liverpudlians and Mancunians in restaurant reality TV

The meaning of life has puzzled the deepest thinkers for thousands of years. This evening, however, we can at last begin to get a sense of what it’s all about. The results are in.

All life, immemorial human endeavour, has always had just one great end: to culminate in a competitive food-based reality TV show.

There can’t be much dispute about it any more. Here we have the dominant cultural form of the age, the one that most powerfully expresses our deepest hopes and fears.

And we’ve got a competitive food-based reality TV show bonanza tonight. After the latest episode of Britain’s Best Home Cook on BBC 1 at 8pm, we can switch over at 9pm, without missing a beat, to a new wonder, Million Pound Menu (BBC2).

Million Pound Menu is, quite simply, The Apprentice, trivially adapted, for wannabe restaurateurs. Each week young hopefuls are given a chance to open their places as pop-ups for three days, to show potential real-life restaurant investors what they can do. First there’s a half-price phoney “soft opening” to see if they can cope with real customers. Next day, the investors are invited to try the food. Then they quiz the contestants to see if they have plausible business plans. Finally, in a grotesquely contrived torture session, the wannabes have to wait an hour to find out if the potential investors are going to turn up to make them an offer.

These investors, by the way, are filmed to make them as imposing, if not threatening, as possible, as if they have escaped from Reservoir Dogs. We see them moving in a group, filmed in slo-mo close-up, walking towards the camera, with the unfortunate result that they seem to be mystifyingly bouncing up and down.

Sadly, there is no Sugar or Trump to play cock of the walk, though. Instead, we must make do as presenter with Fred Sirieix, the wolfish maître d’, who has worked for many years in London restaurants including La Tante Claire, Le Gavroche and Galvin at Windows without ever losing his provoking French accent. Sirieix was the host in Channel 4’s First Dates, offering Gallic love tips, later turned into a book. Here his role is a bit muddled. He hangs about but he doesn’t narrate or intervene, seeming to be there merely to project an air of restaurant professionalism and continental savoir-faire.

His opening patter errs on the bright side. “Right now ze UK’s restaurant scene is ze envy of ze world,” he claims. All it takes to make a fortune is one great idea. Aren’t many restaurants closing at the moment, though? Later the narrator chips in to admit that times are challenging on the high street, “but chains based on strong, simple concepts are still making money”.

And this show is all about that supposed killer concept. Last week it was British food v a shrimp-burger. Tonight, it’s Finca, Cuban street-food, v Wholesome Junkies, vegan junk food.

The Cuban posse, three Liverpudlian chancers, came up with this concept after one of them went on hols to Cuba. Their trophy dish is the “Cubano”, a Cuban baguette. “Eet ‘ees like the ‘am an’ cheese,” cries Sirieix delightedly.

Wholesome Junkies is the creation of spunky 27-year-old Mancunian, Chelsea, whose hair is green, crowned moreover with a floral arrangement and joke ears. Her “hero dish” is her battered cauliflower burger, mirthfully called the “No plucky fried chicken”. Because no chickens are harmed.

Strange how all cookery competitions devolve in the end into a burger! But there it is. All human life is here, at least as we understand it to be, now. Burgers are us.

Pick of the day

Silicon Valley - Sky Atlantic, 10.10pm

There’s a glorious irony at the end of this season finale, as it looks as if Pied Piper, the perpetual losers of the online world, are about to make it big.

If that happens, it would rewrite the rules of Mike Judge’s comedy, which has revolved around the company being eternal also-rans, with the prize always being just out of reach. But this episode contains enough shifts of power, plays and double-deals, to suggest that a simplistic reading of the situation is unlikely to apply.

The joy of the show is the way it applies loser logic to poke fun at the real dilemmas of the internet business. Much of this series has been about the development of a cryptocurrency, along with Pied Piper’s long-cherished dream of a totally decentralised internet.

At first it looks as if Pied Piper has failed with both. But then they notice a sudden rise in the number of active users on their network.

Soon, it turns into a battle between Pied Piper founder Richard (Thomas Middleditch), Hooli’s scheming supremo Gavin (Matt Ross) and a combination of venture capitalist Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer) and Chinese device manufacturer Yao (Tzi Ma).

Screen time

Humans - Channel 4, 9pm

The third series of the robo-human drama continues in splendidly creepy form. There’s a stand-off at gunpoint, which is addressed with some assertive robo-logic, while Laura (Katherine Parkinson) takes delivery of a hunky security detail called Stanley (Dino Fetscher).

The show’s metaphor (synths as immigrant, domestic-help workers) has been heightened, with reports coming over police radios about “foreign green-eyes gaining access to the country by sea”. Laura gains access to the Dryden Commission, where she meets Dr Neil Sommer (the always reliable Mark Bonnar), a behavioural scientist with an unnerving line in small talk. Outside, the people are revolting (the synths, by and large, are well mannered).

London Go - Tomorrow, London Live, 7pm

In March this year, artist Mark Jenkins unveiled a traffic-stopping installation of male figures standing on the edge of ITV buildings along the South Bank. It was produced in association with CALM to raise awareness of male suicide. Jenkins will be in the studio to discuss that project and his new exhibition, Brd Sht, at the Lazinc gallery.

Smoking Guns - London Live, 10pm

IT’S not long now until sweepstakes up and down the country for the World Cup hand a luckless participant a team that will need more than a slice of luck to progress farther even than the opening ceremony. Still, best of luck to Brazil.

A tiny slice of luck is all Jack wants in this wide-boy ride through north London, one £250 bet on three horses being a last-ditch shot at easy money. That oxymoron soon proves its value when Jack’s bookies is pounced on by a range of local heavies and fried-egg-lipped chancers, all aiming to score off his wager.

This debut by Savvas D. Michael trips along, tripping Jack up repeatedly, and even features a turn from Dexter Fletcher as a gobby glory-hunting gambler.

Deep dish

Tig Notaro: Happy To Be Here - Netflix

The deadpan American comic, pictured below, muses in her quiet, confessional way about marriage (to her One Mississippi collaborator Stephanie Allynne) and motherhood. She talks about being mistaken for a man: “I went into a shop and walked up to the counter and the man behind the cash register said: ‘How can I help you, sir?’ And I said, ‘Just the gum, ma’am’.”

Carry On Brussels - All 4

It’s a bit late, possibly, for a three-part documentary illuminating the work of the European Parliament. However, this first part does include the incident in which the Labour MEP Seb Dance holds up a handwritten sign pointing to Nigel Farage with the words “He’s lying to you” written on it. The action takes place last spring, when Article 50 was yet to be triggered, but Brexit still looms large.