A fine line between ‘Crazy’ and childish

Blending the pagan, the biblical and the ridiculous, Netflix’s “Crazy Delicious” puts a colorful spin on the cooking competition series.

For starters, there’s the set. In every competition, three cooks are encouraged to forage through a fake forest of edible plants, spices and ingredients. If you can imagine the Garden of Eden re-created as a food locker from “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse,” you are getting close.

Judges Carla Hall, Niklas Ekstedt and Heston Blumenthal are referred to here as “the food gods,” and they preside like the white-attired deities seen in “Jason and the Argonauts” and so many other sword-and-sandal epics. British comedian Jayde Adams hosts. When her patter runs out, she reminds viewers of the enchanted set by chewing on some of the foliage.

Otherwise, “Crazy” is pretty standard fare. Contestants are given one basic ingredient and challenged to come up with something inventive. The “gods” descend from their Olympus to individual cooking stations, whence they offer sage advice undercut with warnings, much like Tim Gunn on “Project Runway.”

Adams amplifies the ticking clock aspect of the show by announcing the countdown in a loud Cockney accent. Chefs get flustered. Ingredients are forgotten. Things get burned. Recipes fail. You’ve seen this before.

Fifty years after “Sesame Street,” too many basic-cable competitions and most morning and afternoon TV has become indistinguishable from children’s programming. When not presented as frantic kindergarten fare, shows have affected the cozy didactic quality of grade-school lessons. In many ways, Oprah and Ellen have pointed the way toward this return to “Romper Room.”

On top of that, the “emoji” culture of social media and instant messaging returns to the gold stars and stickers one received in second grade. Removed from elementary-school teachers who teach us songs about Halloween and Thanksgiving, we have Facebook to remind us of the special holiday of the day. Every day. Something to remember as we play “show and tell” with our “friends.”

“Crazy Delicious” did not begin this descent into the infantile. So give it some credit for taking juvenile set design to the next level.

“Ultimate Tag” (9 p.m., Fox, TV-PG), anyone?

› A self-described “organizing expert” named Cas Aarssen helps over-acquisitive couples put their hoarded messes in some kind of manageable system on the new series “Hot Mess House” (8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., HGTV).

The end here is not to make them reflect on why

they need so much worthless stuff, it’s to create a “smart” way to store it. So they can buy more.

It’s like building a liquor cabinet for an alcoholic.

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

› Brothers are wheeled into emergency care trailing troubling mysteries on “Chicago Med” (8 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-14).

› A visitor rattles Casey on “Chicago Fire” (9 p.m., NBC, repeat, TV-14).