Hot Picks: Top Takeout

When Ricochet creative director Katy Thorogood and director of programmes Rob Butterfield began discussing their new entertainment format Top Takeout (aka Britain’s Top Takeaway), they kept wondering: “why has this never been done before?”

In the cookery competition show, takeaway businesses fight for supremacy over their peers, judged not by culinary experts, Michelin-starred chefs or restaurant critics, but by ordinary families from their living rooms.

BBC2’s forthcoming version is hosted by radio DJ Sara Cox and comedian Darren Harriott, and is filmed on a purpose-built set in an old ironworks in Manchester’s Northern Quarter – a focal point for some of the city’s best takeaway establishments, Butterfield says.

Cookery competition formats are still in demand from commissioners and buyers off the back of long-standing brands MasterChef, Bake Off or Top Chef, and Top Takeout coincided with a spike in takeaway ordering as people sought solace in food during lockdown.

But Thorogood and Butterfield say the idea had been forming long before: “I’ve noticed over the past five years that the quality of takeaways has gone up,” Thorogood says. “Back in my day, it was a guilty pleasure: Fridays you got a takeaway. But there is a generation below us who order from Deliveroo as their food shopping, not as a treat. And they’re ordering high-quality stuff.

“There are myriad businesses that have grown up behind that trend, passionate about quality food.” Butterfield says Ricochet had originally conceived an access doc, having featured Deliveroo on its Channel 4 consumer affairs food returner Food Unwrapped, but “that idea morphed into a “very different and exciting format instead”.

Establishing a point of difference in the crowded food market was important and a key decision for making an “authentic and visceral” programme was using ordinary people as the judges. “Our rule was to make it authentic to the real world and how deliveries actually work,” says Thorogood.

Adding to the appeal of the show are the dynamics between the participating takeaway firms. “They bonded with each other in this really lovely way,” says Thorogood. “Those small businesses are normally set up by a couple of mates or a husband and wife. They’d all had their journey. There was lovely camaraderie in the room.”

Butterfield says the show also reflects cultural touchstones that are shaping modern society. Each takeaway, for example, is required to produce vegetarian and vegan options for the dishes they prepare, while the business owners represent a cross-section of diverse Britain.

Top Takeout is already attracting attention within the WBITVP group for adaptation in other territories, and Thorogood and Butterfield see the US as a natural home for an international version. Having a substantial episode order from the BBC, which Thorogood says “got the format immediately”, helps strengthen its global appeal.