Cooking With The Stars review: ITV's celeb chefs are in a cooking show with no cookery and a contest with no competition, but it'll keep the sponsors happy

Cooking With The Stars (ITV, Tues, 8pm), for example, began a fourth run this week – I know, four series, who knew? - and it was hard to shake the impression that that the makers had merely snipped bits off other shows, put them in a blender and plated up the resulting slop as an exciting new fusion dish.

There's a dash of Strictly Come Dancing, a pinch of Ready, Steady, Cook, a drizzle of Masterchef and it's all held by the Michelin-starred presenting duo of Emma Willis and Tom Allen.

Allen's great on most things, but he's in danger of becoming the television equivalent of scallops and minty pea puree – innovative and delicious at first, but so over-used as to become dull and uninteresting.

To be fair, he and Willis have very little to do here, the format does all the heavy lifting.

Eight celebs are 'mentored' by eight pro cooks. The celebs are paired off and each have an hour to cook one dish. There are two of these 'battles' per episode – the best two stay in the competition, the two duds go into a cook-off, and the loser goes home.

There are a lot of filmed inserts of the celebs fooling around with kitchen utensils, bathed in a golden light. Interviews in which they boast of being useless in the kitchen, or having “fallen out of love with food”, and bits of light-hearted VT in the stars' houses, when their mentor turns up to run them through the dish they'll cook in the studio.

The most interesting thing about these films is the insight in afford into the dietary habits of the rich and famous.

Number-cruncher Carol Vorderman, for example, tells us that she only eats one meal a day and likes to snack on a bag of Brussels sprouts. Cue film of Carol toting an abacus with sprouts for counters.

The other thing these films do is take away the need to show any actual cooking – there simply isn't the time, what with the intros films, and the ‘at-home’ VT and the sponsorship buffers.

It may start off like a conventional TV competition show – with the bombastic music, hype statements and metallic 'clash-of-swords' sound effects as the captions drop onto the screen from a great height – but as soon as Willis and Allen appear in the studio if becomes a This Morning cookery segment stretched filo pastry-thin over an hour.

You can't tell what the celebs have cooked, you can't even tell if the celebs have done the cooking themselves – some of the ingredients seem suspiciously pre-prepared.

For a show in which the competitors are self-confessed incompetents, it doesn't give you any handy hints, or recipes or oven temperatures. And unlike Masterchef, the competition doesn't seem to matter anyway, with everyone disgustingly supportive.

So it's a cooking show with no cookery, and a contest with no competition. So what is Cooking With The Stars really for?

The clue is in the sponsors, Marks and Spencer, whose name appears round the ad breaks in little 'comedy' films.

Now a trip around and M&S food hall is a great endorphin hit if you're feeling low – their extra cream custard creams are insanely good – but comedy is not their strong point.

And it's not confined to the ad breaks. Cooking With The Stars itself uses familiar M&S typography and colour palettes, and the contestants, we are told, cook with M&S ingredients.

In the end, those commissioning executives at ITV are making Cooking With The Stars for the sponsors, and it's a greedy grab for cash which leaves the viewer feeling under-nourished.