Gordon Ramsay joins BBC series on Britain’s rockstar chef era
The Rise of the Rockstar Chef will profile Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal for BBC One and iPlayer.
By Bianca Rossi · Entertainment Editor
2 min read
Gordon Ramsay is heading back to the era that helped turn chefs into TV-sized personalities, with BBC One and iPlayer commissioning The Rise of the Rockstar Chef from Studio Ramsay Global, Deadline reported.
The series will profile three of Britain’s best-known kitchen names: Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal. According to the report, the show will examine how their ambition, rivalries and public profiles helped change Britain’s restaurant business and the role of the fine-dining chef.
Set during the Cool Britannia period, the BBC series will look beyond plates and pass tickets to the drama around the kitchens. Deadline reported that the program will include testimony from Ramsay, Pierre White and Blumenthal, along with people who saw the clashes and fallouts around them at close range.
Those contributors are set to include food critics, maîtres d’ and former commis chefs, according to the report. The series will focus on the fights, feuds and professional tension that surrounded the chefs as British dining gained a louder cultural profile.
Ramsay’s own company is behind it
The project comes from Studio Ramsay Global, Ramsay’s production company. Fox Entertainment Global, Fox’s distribution arm, is handling sales for the show, Deadline reported.
Ramsay has long been a major television figure in both the UK and the United States, and Deadline noted that he has made hundreds of hours of cooking programming for Fox.
Studio Ramsay Chief Creative Officer Lisa Edwards said the pull of the 1990s and 2000s is strong for viewers who lived through the period and for those discovering it later. She pointed to the era’s mix of fashion, politics and music, while saying another “rock and roll revolution” was happening in UK food.
Edwards described Marco, Gordon and Heston as the original rockstar chefs, and said the series would tell a story about rivalry and the drive for perfection, with pressure extending well beyond the kitchen.
Who is making the BBC series
The Rise of the Rockstar Chef was commissioned for BBC One and iPlayer by Catherine Catton, the BBC’s head of commissioning for factual entertainment and events. Ricky Cooper is the BBC commissioning editor, according to Deadline.
Zoë Dobson is serving as series director and producer. Edwards and Amanda Westwood are executive producers, Jess Holder is executive in charge of production, and Emma Pinching is line producer.
No broadcast date was included in the reported commissioning details.
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.