TVSquad

I love British chef Gordon Ramsay. I love watching him on TV, whether it's his Fox shows -- Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares -- or the ones that have turned up on BBC America like Ramsay's Boiling Point and the most recent show, The F Word. The F stands for food, by the way. Much as I love him, though, I don't think I want him as a teacher.

Well, that's what he's going to be doing next. The Simon Cowell of cooking is plotting something new for the network. Ramsay's doing a special cooking show for Fox in the Julia Child tradition, teaching how to do what he does. The idea is for Gordon to create a three-course dinner while giving home viewers instructions about how to do it with him.


Across the pond, as they say, Ramsay did a show like this called Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live, which is what this might be. That program, however, included Gordon working with a celebrity guest. Presumably he was nice to the star, turning on the charm and not calling anyone a donkey and a dumb ass.

So far, Fox is saying its version is strictly Gordon talking to the camera with cut away shots of some viewers following his instructions and making the meal with him. I guess Gordon could have a monitor set up to see what they're doing and yell at them as if they were beside him. You know, call them stupid sows when they use put sugar in the soup instead of salt (that happened once on Top Chef during restaurant wars!). Won't that be special?

Ramsay is quoted as saying that he's frustrated by most cooking shows because there's so little actual cooking done because so many steps are prepped in advance. That's sort of true, but if he's ever seen Food Network's Tyler's Ultimate, he would know that Tyler Florence cooks a three-course meal from start to finish, including most of the chopping, grilling and plating on camera. And Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals episodes include her taking all the ingredients out of the fridge and cabinet as well as her prepping every bit of the meal in 30 minutes.

No date has been set for Ramsay's special, although spring is likely. If it does well, there could be more shows, but it's not conceived as a series. We'll see about that because right now Gordon's one of Fox's most sure-fire stars.