Good grief, are people STILL posting in this thread about how bad the show is?
Hey TVFoodie, how do you know it's still bad? You're still tuning in to watch? Can't be THAT bad then, eh? 
I thought I'd write a bit of a 'Report' on my experiences visiting the show - something bring some positivity to this thread amongst all the gloom! I've recently returned from another visit. I've been a few times now - it's free (well, apart from travel costs), you get fed, and it's a very interesting day out.
We have been several times, usually for about 4 or 5 hours. If you arrive in the morning you get a lovely introductory speech from the floor manager (a very friendly, jovial chap called Wayne who cracks the whip on the floor and gets things moving along). Teas, coffees, water, juice, light snacks etc are always available from the 'barristas' (coffee people, in black). You are herded around according to where they will be filming so that you can see what's going on and they can see you (to maintain the slightly daft illusion of a working bustling cafe). They have started to come round asking you what you thought of things after they've been cooked, which can be a bit dramatic as two or three cameras get pointed at you with a microphone dangling over your head, but it's quite good fun. There's a lot of stopping and starting, but the coffee people are very chatty. You get a really nice big lunch for an hour if you're there at lunch time, and sandwiches for half an hour in the evening. One thing that's very odd but I suppose necessary is that as all the cameras are pointing at the kitchens during items, in breaks they ask us all to keep looking at the hobs and then film us doing so, as well as filming us eat the things they've cooked - you become very conscious of your table manners!
As for the people that work in the studio, what we saw was a lot of hard-working young men and women, researchers, 'runners' (the coffee people), camerapeople (male and female!), sound recordists, make up people, and home economists who cook all the various stages of "here's one I made earlier" for the recipes that would take too long to make live.
These people worked very hard. The researchers were friendly and personable to a man, although most of the time they're rushed off their feet clarifying facts for the presenters, talking in their headsets to directors or producers and generally making sure everything is where it needs to be. The people who walk around bringing coffee really are walking around bringing coffee - or anything else you fancy, and are only too happy to engage you in chat about who you are, where you're from, what you do, etc etc (quite dishy, too!). For the camera people it looks very physical, carrying portable cameras for pretty much 12 hours (by all accounts - my partner and I were only there for 6) and the sense of teamwork and camaraderie (camera-derie? hehe) between them was palpable. The girls (and guy) that prepare all the food - well, all I can say is they are clearly exceptionally accomplished cooks, as not only do they cook versions of all the food the chefs are purportedly making, but they can obviously cook it to their standards, and have it ready at very specific times to fit in with the recording of the show, which itself can be a long a drawn out process. Most impressive time management skills!
I suppose what I'm trying to say is that while the show I have been watching on TV is frustratingly bereft of warmth (with increasing glimpses of style from some of the better guest chefs), the feel that you get from being in the studio can be quite the opposite. I've always left feeling welcomed, informed, and entertained by what I've seen. It's really quite interesting how little of that feeling translates to the screen and I put it down to there being a considerable amount being chopped or edited out. In fact I've seen numerous engaging and interesting exchanges get stopped because they were over-running. I also feel the show is 'staged' in such a way that it might look engaging but it doesn't promote engaging chat. Finally, there are too many presenters and not enough 'nouse'. I hate to bring up GFL because that show is gone and it's not coming back, but Jeni was one woman who knew what she thought, and knew what she wanted to ask, and she allowed items to breathe and to develop naturally rather than pursuing a fixed line of questioning. This allowed her to pay respect to those she was interviewing or observing, and that's not something that's allowed to happen in the hurried pace of this show. There are too many seperate items and not enough of a connection between them, for one thing. I think there could easily still be one less major item in each show, allowing everything else to breathe a bit more, and suddenly everything would come to life. In fact, I sincerely hope someone with power is reading this, because it's the one thing I think could inject some life into things. LESS IS MORE!
Now then, where was I? 
Overall I watch this show now with a considerably changed eye than when I first saw it, as I now feel I know that coffee man and all those faceless studio people. There's a team working their backsides off in there, many to just pay their bills and mortgage I'm sure, and while I'm not suggesting that anyone gives the content of the show some slack because of what I've written above, I did just want to give those people their due in a brief break before you all get back to cracking the whip on whoever holds the reigns...
Did I mention LESS IS MORE?
G.
I pop into this thread every now and again to see what you lot are moaning about now - considering you hate the show, there's an awful lot of people that are still terribly knowledgeable about what's been happening on it lately.
What's caused me to break my silence is the moaning about slates for cheese by gastrosurf (nice name, by the way!). First you moan about how the show is sooooo appalling for using OHMYGOD ROOF SLATES for cheese. Then you're corrected - a lot of people use slate to present cheese. Undaunted, you concede the point but fight back with the suggestion that MK must have purchased them from B&Q (so tacky) and are quite desperate to appear trendy.
Of course, you've forgotten that GFL used slates many, many, MANY times to present cheese, amongst other things...
But of course, that was probably a much better class of slate...
Wow, this new Market Kitchen message board has really taken off, hasn't it! SO many new messages, where to begin??
SarahNarya - you probably said you didn't like MK...
I don't like MK. I think there has been a woeful misinterpretation of what food shows should be about these days. I can understand exactly why GFL was taken off. Notwithstanding all the furiously devoted supporters of the show on these forums, to look at it from outside the show was very old fashioned. Two hobs, one presenters, chefs come on and cook something, a sofa for having an interview, some wine and some beer items, the end.
Very 'old school'. Unfortunately, this was the very reason it was so well liked. Its content was very easy to enjoy - it was entertaining AND informative at the same time. It allowed restaurant quality chefs to come on and show us how to cook restaurant quality food, as well as how to get the very best from very basic ingredients. The chefs interaction with Jeni came forward and entertained us, Jeni asked the questions we would ask and was educated along with us. There was no highly-produced sheen getting in the way. It was what it was, and it was driven by an exceptionally entertaining and very PERSONAL presenter, who had decades of experience behind her.
Where MK falls flat on its backside is very simple - it is clearly supposed to be an entertaining show about food, but the problem is that it behaves as though the last 5 years of GFL didn't exist. There really isn't anything entertaining or informative about watching a deeply talented chef show us something embarrassingly simple, then watching members of the 'public' attempt it themselves, Generation-Game-style. It's not informative, and as an entertainment device it's as old as the hills. Certainly not innovative. A complete waste of time.
The 'viewer recipes' and 'viewer restaurant reviews' that have been mooted on the website are also totally pointless. To be honest, I get NO entertainment or education from watching a wannabe actress/15-minutes-of-famer telling us what they thought of their local cafe or how they grow cress at their desk.
The camera work is indeed vomit-inducing, but I can see why it's being done. Someone in power there has decided that the show has to be all glossy, fast, snappy. Why don't they realise there needs to be CONTENT to back this up? What the show needs is EXPERTS. It needs what experienced professionals it has booked to be allowed to fully take the stage, rather than being stooges in these frothy silly games and inter-presenter rivalries.
It is currently hamstrung by presenters who obviously haven't found their feet yet. I have no idea what the daily schedule for this show is, but there clearly hasn't been enough time to bed in the weakest links (and of course they know who we mean). The thing is, even when they've finally built up some personality and a relationship between each other (which will happen - look at how Merrilees, JC and Stefan started to gel by the time Food Uncut was canned), I don't see a show worth watching here.
My biggest concern is that the content of the show has been locked in, and so frothy, worthless 'Generation Game' style items, scripted 'questions' from the audience and the very shallow 'competition' between the two presenters to cook a better 'INSERT ENTRY LEVEL RECIPE HERE' than the other one, are all really REALLY bad ideas. They teach us nothing, and they do it in such a selfimportant, stiff-upper-lip way as to patronise us deeply. I would expect this from a tea-time ITV show, but not from a specialist TV channel.
UKTV, and the producers of Market Kitchen - if you are here for the long haul, please don't dumb down your content. It's the single worst feature of the show. Fix it, make it much MUCH more intelligent and educational, and less of a Saturday morning game show, and you might just claw your way back into my daily viewing schedule.
baboush 1 - you don't seriously think the show is actually being produced live each day and then being edited that afternoon for the evening, do you?
It's quite well known now that they've been making the show for the last few weeks in fact, and that it's very much pre-recorded at least a week if not more so in advance.
Shame, I liked it when they loused up on GFL too
Producers of the show have nothing to do with the decision - producers are the people in charge of each episode's content, and have been as stitched up as poor Jeni and us viewers have.
You want to be blaming EXECUTIVES, at the UKTV channel.
