‘Makes your skin sag and your bones creak’ – Come Dine With Me: Teens is the tedious spin-off no one needed

This is far from the first new version the cooking show’s attempted. But it might just be its most dull

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f there is one tried and true formula when it comes to television, it is this: when you run out of ideas, bring the kids in. This formula is why everything from MasterChef to The Great British Bake Off to Taskmaster has, at some point, bitten the bullet and introduced a junior version. And now it’s time for Come Dine With Me to join the gang.

Which is probably a bit late, all said. It took five years for MasterChef to bring in a junior version, and just one for Bake Off. Meanwhile, Come Dine With Me is 20. To call it long in the tooth would be a profound disservice to long teeth.

Come Dine With Me: Teens – for that is the title of the new series – just drives this point home further. The contestants who appear are between 16 and 19 years old. This means that they are all younger than Come Dine With Me. Not a single one of them knows what it is to live in a world where Come Dine With Me has yet to be invented. If that doesn’t make your skin sag and your bones creak, I’m not sure what will.