The Best (TV series)

The Best is a British programme[1] which aired for ten episodes between April and July 2002 on BBC Two. The series starred British cooks Silvana Franco and Paul Merrett and Australian Ben O'Donoghue, who participated in a friendly competition to create the best dish for each of two given categories per half-hour episode. Judging was performed by a rotating panel of three judges, who were not told who created which dish.

The series aired on BBC Two every Tuesday night at 8:30pm between 23 April and 16 July 2002 (except 25 June and 2 July due to a knock-on effect of Wimbledon tennis coverage).[2] It was later repeated on the same channel between January and March 2005,[3] and several times on the now-defunct UKTV Food between 2003 and 2009.[4] The sixty recipes seen in the series were collected in a 2003 book, also titled The Best. (ISBN 978-0563488538)