There was an awful lot of Gordon Ramsay content on telly this week.
First up, last Sunday night Prince Harry did that fabulous impression of him as he read excerpts from Spare.
(What do you mean, that’s Harry’s real voice?)
Next, Gordon himself showed up on any broadcast that would have him as he tried to drum up trade for his latest cooking show.
Then, on Wednesday night, Next Level Chef duly arrived on ITV.
If you missed it, a quick recap. It’s a lazy, uninspired and uninspiring mash-up of Ready, Steady, Cook, The X Factor and Are You Being Served?, filmed in what looks like a double-glazed multi-storey car park in the middle of nowhere.
I’ll level with you. I was looking at my remote and thinking “next channel, chef” within the first few minutes.
What Gordon has done here is taken his moderately successful American TV format, thrown 12 British contestants into it, and then served it up for a UK audience – still dripping with its shouty American soundtrack and in-your-face American production values.
If the noise and fairground waltzer camera action don’t put you off, the humdrum format probably will.
The gimmick is that the contestants cook on three kitchen levels – Top, Middle and Basement – between which they can move depending on how good or bad their food is.
To be fair, Gordon, his fellow judges/mentors and the contestants try to make the travel between the floors appear more exciting than it is.
Sadly, you still find yourself saying, “You’re going up and down three floors max, chaps.
"You’re hardly being tossed down the shaft at Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve by John McClane.”
However, speaking of drama, this first show did end with some “coming up” footage of a shocked Gordon yelling “F***ing’ hell” and slumping with his head in his hands. So things could be about to get spicy.
Either that or he’d just been given an early steer on the opening night’s viewing figures.
What’s that? How bad were the actual numbers?
Well, if we’re talking lift levels, let’s go with somewhere between Basement and Earth’s Core.
