The Big Flower Fight

No one on BFF is tossing tables, but there is a dull kind of friction. ... The challenges are so overwrought and specific they deny the contestants the chance to do what is most satisfying, for them and us: make something truly inventive from a simple prompt. ... The Big Flower Fight isn’t as lulling as GBBO, but it’s not as jaunty, propulsive, or technically impressive as other competition shows either. Don’t get me wrong, it’s edible, but it’s someone else’s comfort food.

This series contains lovely proposals at the start of each episode and a few eye-popping pageants in the form of the judging segments, and using the fast-forward button on one's remote makes it very easy to skip from one eye-teasing pretty to the next without losing much storytelling along the way. Much of what comes between those segments is chaff, making the charms of "The Big Flower Fight" that aren't wasted at best temporary pleasures that fade away all too quickly. And you might wonder if it was worth the (time) expense at the end of it all.

Bake Off and its ilk transmute basic ingredients and materials into something better. The travel of Flower Fight is in the opposite direction. Watching the innumerable contestants (the producers can’t even be bothered to show us all of them in the opening episode) descend like a plague of locusts on the nursery provided for the show and denude it of its naturally beautiful stock, then force the plants and flowers into unnatural forms to far less beautiful effect is more depressing than uplifting. It’s sometimes actively painful. The presenters don’t seem convinced by the endeavour, either.

Skip it, unless you have a serious itch for some foliage-porn.