8.2 /10 1 Votes
8.7/10 TV Country of origin United Kingdom No. of series 7 First episode date 27 April 2004 | 7.7/10 IMDb Original language(s) English Running time 44 minutes Final episode date 18 December 2007 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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No. of episodes 36 (28 originals and 8 revisits) Awards International Emmy Award for best Non-Scripted Entertainment Executive producers Patricia Llewellyn, Christine Hall Similar The F Word, Hell's Kitchen, Hotel Hell, Gordon's Great Escape, Gordon Ramsay: Cookalon Profiles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is a television program featuring British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. The BAFTA and Emmy Award-winning programme debuted on Channel 4 in 2004.
Contents
In each episode, Ramsay visits a failing restaurant and acts as a troubleshooter to help improve the establishment in just one week. Ramsay revisits the restaurant a few months later to see how business has fared in his absence. Episodes from series one and two have been re-edited with additional new material as Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares Revisited; they featured Ramsay checking up on restaurants a year or more after he attended to them.
An American adaptation of this show, titled Kitchen Nightmares, debuted 19 September 2007, on Fox. It is broadcast in the UK on Channel 4 as Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA.
In October 2009 Ramsay announced that after his four-year contract expired in 2011 he would not continue with Kitchen Nightmares and would instead work on his other shows. In June 2014, however, Ramsay announced that the UK version would return for four episodes after a seven-year hiatus. These four episodes will bring the "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" franchise, which exists in the United States and the United Kingdom, to an end.
Great British Nightmare
A one-off special entitled Ramsay's Great British Nightmare aired on Channel 4 on 30 January 2009 as part of 'The Great British Food Fight', a two-week series of food-related programming. In the program, Ramsay campaigned for viewers to start supporting local restaurants, especially in a bad economy.
Libel
In June 2006, Ramsay won a High Court case against the Evening Standard, which had alleged that scenes and the general condition of the restaurant had been faked for the first episode of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. These allegations followed reports from previous owner of Bonapartes, Sue Ray. Ramsay was awarded £75,000 plus costs. Ramsay said at the time: "I won't let people write anything they want to about me. We have never done anything in a cynical, fake way."
Reception
The programme received favourable reviews for its in-depth look into the restaurant industry. Jane Redfem of Off the Telly commented that the show "could have been cynically designed to exploit Ramsay's foul-mouthed reputation... But watch, listen and think about what he is saying, and his genuine commitment to his profession in general, and the task at hand become abundantly evident." Lorna Martin of The Observer said "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares is compulsive viewing – packed with excitement, emotion and entertainment." Slate's Sara Dickerman was impressed by the show's "economic realism" in the tired food television genre. She wrote, "There is something refreshing about a show that doesn't promise a ticket to ride (a surgical makeover, a million dollars, Richard Branson's job) but instead offers restaurant owners the hope—if they seriously reform their establishments—that they might, just might, break even for the next few months."
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares was named Best Feature at the 2005 and 2008 BAFTA awards. It also earned the 2006 International Emmy for best non-scripted entertainment.
United States
On 3 March 2009, Acorn Media released season 1 of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on DVD in the US. Season 2 was released on 1 September 2009. [1]
Canada
For the Canadian market, Visual Entertainment has released the first three seasons of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on DVD in two volume sets.