I like the concept of a behind-the-scenes look at the workings of a restaurant, but does it have to be yet another “reality” show, with all that ad hoc casting and so forth? It’s sort of like a culinary Making the Band. I’d be just as (if not more) happy with a show profiling the development of a real restaurant and the real people who run it. I suppose that kind of special-interest, documentary programming (read: real “reality” TV) gets relegated to public and cable television, not prime-time networks. (Cf. “24 Hours at the Golden Apple,” This American Life, Nov. 17, 2000.)
The BBC had a number of “reality” series on this concept a few years ago, which sometimes made it to Discovery’s vast empire or to BBC America. While they didn’t do a series on a restaurant - as far as I know - they did do shows on a hotel, an airport, veterinary school, and a department store, which were very interesting. They did not dwell on such things as the private lives and loves of the staff, but showed what the job was really like and what it took to run such an establishment. I wish they would re-run some of those shows, or create new ones. “Restaurant,” “Pub,” “Book Store,” and the like would be appealing…
Definitely. Ah, yes, I vaguely remember watching BBC’s Airport. I don’t remember where or when—I think it was a one-off carried by a public and/or international TV channel when I lived in the Bay Area—but in any case, it made for enthralling television.
Another of these types of shows that I actually do have some interest in seeing is the upcoming BBC America offering of Faking It, in which people are given four weeks of instruction in a new vocation—hot dog vendor to haute cuisine chef, sheep shearer to London hairdresser, vicar to used car salesman—with the aim of trying to fool experts in their new field.
Now those types of reality shows sound interesting. The only one I could watch without ever feeling guilty while doing so was 1900 House on PBS.
Oh my gosh! “Faking It” is so awesome—that’s the one where the champion beer drinker has to play sommelier, right? LOVED it!