THE AMERICAN BAKING COMPETITION
CBS, 8:00 p.m. ET
SERIES PREMIERE: This new CBS series, which takes 10 amateur chefs and has them compete each week in three contests to assess their abilities as amateur bakers, is based on a hot series from the U.K. – so don’t dismiss it out of hand. Cooking-show imports, either adapted or acquired wholesale, include one of my all-time faves, the original Japanese Iron Chef. And The American Baking Competition is hosted, in this incarnation, by Jeff Foxworthy, who’s proven himself quite adept at this stuff, most recently with GSN’s American Bible Challenge. And on this competition show, the plot doesn’t thicken. It rises.