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International "game show" format, originally produced by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, 2005 to present.
The concept is simple: Five (four in primetime) contestants take turns hosting a dinner party at their houses (you don't have to cook the food; but it's generally the done thing). The four/three other contestants mark it secretly on a scale of 1 of 10. The contestant with the highest score wins £1,000.
As with an omelette, great things can come out of a simple idea. You get arguments, bad food ideas and all the eccentricities of this world. Season with a fine dressing of snark from Narrator Dave Lamb, and you have a superb meal for four.
Tropes used in Come Dine With Me include:
- Cordon Bleugh Chef: The more ambitious and deluded contestants.
- Body Sushi: Featured in one episode.
- Deadpan Snarker: Narrator Dave Lamb
- Dinner and a Show
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Regularly subverted with female contestants who pay more attention to their clothes, hair and makeup than they do to their cooking, possibly proving that this one is not Truth in Television.
- Flanderization: Watch an early episode and you could be forgiven for thinking there was a different narrator. Dave Lamb's voiceover was originally restrained and unobtrusive but began to take centre stage as it got more snide and sarcastic.
- Foreign Queasine
- Insult to Rocks: A staple of Dave Lamb's narration.
- Manipulative Editing
- Multi National Shows
- Small Name, Big Ego: Practically all of the contestants.