It's New to Me: Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited

While Gordon Ramsay is a pretty polarizing TV personality, as many are learning through Hell's Kitchen, I got my first taste of his forceful personality on Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (shown here on BBC America), where he would spend a week at a failing restaurant trying to help turn it around. There were only four episodes, but they were pretty entertaining. Ramsay did his share of yelling and cursing, and generally got positive results, in some cases lasting to his revisiting the restaurant one month later.

In this new show, Ramsay goes back to the original four restaurants about a year later to see if the changes took for the long term. This sounds like a set-up that would best serve original viewers, but if you've never watched the originals don't sweat it. The first 50 minutes of each episode recap the original episode. Only the last 10 minutes actually "revisit" the restaurant. I'd have liked at least half the episode to be about the revisiting.

So if you've never seen the show, go ahead and watch. If you saw the originals, only tune in at the start if you forget what happened. Otherwise, tune in around 45 minutes in and you'll be fine.