Gordon Ramsay Joins Richard Branson in Fox's Reality TV Hell

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Brish super chef Gordon Ramsay is joining British billionaire Richard Branson by launching his own Reality TV show. That is, he's having a go of it again, really, this time in the American market. Announced for launch on Fox TV this Fall but re-scheduled for January 2005, Hell's Kitchen will be an American version of a UK show with the same name. Fox, which also airs Branson's show Rebel Billionaire, describes Hell's Kitchen as "a culinary boot camp that features a group of wannabe Cordon Bleu cooks and aspiring restaurateurs running a top-class restaurant, overseen by world-renowned but terrifying Head Chef Gordon Ramsay" which will "serve helpings of terror, tears, tantrums and triumphs." What fun, eh what? Ramsay is being billed as a chef variation of American Idol's Simon Cowell and The Apprentice's Donald Trump. According to The Los Angeles Times, Ramsay re-writes the definitionn of "over the top" along more British lines -- choking on a rotten scallop in an alley way, Ramsay hurls "a string of bleeped-out expletives that makes Tony Bourdain sound like Captain Kangaroo" as it airs currently on BBC America as Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares in a four-part series. (Click here to watch a video clip.) Are we talking over-exposure here? I mean, either BBC is out to take back the British lion's share of Reality TV, or somebody is making as many deals as they possibly can -- in fear that the Reality TV bubble has already burst? And this is not to mention the already intense line-up of Reality TV cooking shows lining up for 2005, as already reported here on superchefblog: super chef Todd English's bid on (the once venerable) PBS with American Chef (see links, below) and the Food Network Iron Chef rework entitled Iron Chef America, itself a second version of the first American version by Lionsgate Entertainment and UPN called Iron Chef USA, also featuring Todd English (called "'an abomination" and "an insult to food fans" by The San Francisco Chronicle and described in Super Chef, pp. 112-114, 126). It's all so incestuos, so fatuous -- such bad taste (pun intended)! Still, maybe there is a way for Ramsay to make it on Fox: rename the show Kitchen Hell's Rebel Survivor-Apprentice-cum-Idol and have done with it! Shoot them all down in one fell stroke, eh what? Oh, jolly good show! Oh, well done, Commander! -- Quite! Previous articles: World AID's Day II: Iron Chef Cat Cora Rocco DiSpirito Wins TV Turkey Dinner More Reality TV Chefs (Or Less)? Real TV Cooking? Kitchen Confidential a la Sex and the City Rocco DiSpirito: Be Warned By Me! Iron Chef: America vs USA Todd English: American Chef Gone Wild Rocco Barred from Reality TV Restaurant Rocco: Trapped in Reality TV's Twilight Zone?