Chef! | |
---|---|
Created by | Peter Tilbury (based on an idea from Lenny Henry) |
Starring | Lenny Henry Caroline Lee-Johnson Roger Griffiths |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Original language | English |
No. of series | 3 |
No. of episodes | 20 (list of episodes) |
Production | |
Executive producer | Polly McDonald |
Producer | Crucial Films for the BBC |
Camera setup | Single-camera (series 1 and 2) Multi-camera (series 3) |
Running time | approx. 30 minutes |
Original release | |
Network | BBC1 |
Release | 28 January 1993 – 30 December 1996 |
Chef! is a British situation comedy starring Lenny Henry that aired as twenty episodes over three series from 28 January 1993 to 30 December 1996 on the BBC. The show was created and primarily written by Peter Tilbury based on an idea from Lenny Henry [1] and produced for the BBC by Henry's production company, Crucial Films. [2]
Henry starred as Gareth Blackstock, a talented, arrogant, tyrannical and obsessed chef who has endlessly inventive insults for his staff, unknowing customers, and almost anyone else he encounters. Chef Blackstock's traditional French cuisine with an eclectic flair is served at "Le Château Anglais," a gourmet restaurant in the English countryside that is one of the few in the United Kingdom to receive a two-star rating from Michelin. The chef's quest for perfection and his lack of awareness about the costs of that perfection mean that the restaurant is on the brink of financial collapse when he and his wife Janice (played by Caroline Lee-Johnson) buy it early in the first series. The establishment mostly remains on that brink, despite Janice's best efforts as manager, eventually coming under the control of the boorish Cyril Bryson (Dave Hill) in the final series.
Although focused on the restaurant's kitchen, the countryside (with its black market suppliers) and the Blackstocks' home life are also backdrops for the show; the chef's long hours mean that Janice is routinely neglected in the bedroom, and their plans for a family remain delayed.
Besides Gareth and Janice Blackstock, a third character, Everton Stonehead (played by Roger Griffiths), appears throughout all three series. Stonehead went to school with the chef and dreams of becoming a top chef himself. He bumbles through his early days in the kitchen, but eventually even develops a signature dish of his own.
According to Lenny Henry: [3]
Lenny Henry was coached in cooking techniques at the L'Ortolan Restaurant, in Shinfield, Reading, Berkshire. [4] The restaurant was modelled on, and many scenes were filmed at, Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons, a restaurant in Oxfordshire owned by chef Raymond Blanc.[ citation needed ] Many other scenes were filmed at Nether Winchendon House, in Buckinghamshire. The third series was shot at Teddington Studios in Middlesex. Celebrity chef John Burton Race acted as food consultant for the show.
The first two series were shot on film and directed in the style of a drama series, with the finished episodes shown to screening audiences.
Lenny Henry stated on his website that he and Tilbury had worked on a storyline for another series, but that nothing came of it. [5]
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | "Personnel" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 28 January 1993 | |
Gareth Blackstock is the executive chef at Le Chateau Anglais, and he is infuriated when management cuts his budget. He is one up on the budget when Everton shows up and volunteers his service as a chef for no compensation in order to train in the most famous kitchen in England. | |||||
2 | "Beyond the Pass" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 4 February 1993 | |
In order to make a successful takeover of the restaurant, Gareth and Janice must first make certain personal sacrifices before they grovel to the bank manager. This is no easy task for someone with a pathological hatred of bank managers. | |||||
3 | "Subject to Contract" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 11 February 1993 | |
Having made the ultimate sacrifice of putting their idyllic cottage on the market, Janice feels that Gareth must now set about raising his own public profile in the press... (Just a smiley picture...) To raise the profile of his restaurant, Gareth opens his kitchen to the press. But Everton has lost track of something very personal and rather unpleasant in the veal stew. Or was it in the pies? Or the ravioli? | |||||
4 | "The Big Cheese" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 25 February 1993 | |
Gareth discovers that famous chef Albert Roux is about to honour his restaurant with a visit. He tries to coax his troops into preparing the perfect meal. Gareth goes in search of the perfect unpasteurized English Stilton. But beware the Cheese Police! | |||||
5 | "Fame Is the Spur" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 4 March 1993 | |
Janice arranges for Gareth and Le Chateau to be featured in the television food program Kitchens Live. The producer has a few surprises in store for Gareth, and Everton manages to release 50 pounds of live crayfish in the kitchen. | |||||
6 | "Rice and Peas" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 11 March 1993 | |
Gareth has promised his father a Caribbean evening at Le Chateau. The trouble is, he knows nothing of Caribbean cuisine. Gareth must endure the ultimate indignity of requesting Everton's assistance in the matter. | |||||
7 | "A Bird in the Hand" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 24 December 1993 | |
A disagreement with his regular poultry supplier leads Gareth and Janice on a hunt for Christmas turkeys. This episode was originally a "stand alone" episode, having aired much later than the first six episodes of Series 1. |
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
8 | "A River Runs Thru It" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 8 September 1994 | |
The kitchen staff at Le Chateau are overwhelmed, and Gareth simply must find another chef as soon as possible. The new addition to the kitchen staff (Gustav LaRoche) proves to be more than a handful for Gareth when it turns out that he prefers imbibing the wine rather than cooking with it. | |||||
9 | "Time Flies" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 15 September 1994 | |
Janice suspects that she may be pregnant and she insists that they seek outside investment to secure their offspring's future. Gareth's reaction is typically uncertain about both. | |||||
10 | "Do the Right Thing" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 22 September 1994 | |
Is there no end to the depths that Gareth will stoop to get the finest ingredients for his renowned dishes? Gareth deals with a "poacher" to get ingredients. But the long arm of the law is quickly in pursuit. Will Gareth land in the soup? | |||||
11 | "A Diploma of Miseries" | John Birkin | Geoff Deane | 29 September 1994 | |
Publicity-shy Gareth is hounded by Janice to appear on a chat show, but she soon wishes she had never bothered. When Gareth bad-mouths Janice's cooking to the television audience, he might as well book in with Everton at the latter's new flat. Everton tries to teach his boss a few things about 'amour'. | |||||
12 | "Masterchef" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 13 October 1994 | |
Everton has developed his own signature dish and, much to Gareth's (very publicly displayed) irritation, he begins to hog the media spotlight! | |||||
13 | "Private Lives" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 20 October 1994 | |
The kitchen staff are having domestic troubles en masse and it's up to Gareth to play agony aunt, if only to get his staff back to work. | |||||
14 | "England Expects" | John Birkin | Peter Tilbury | 27 October 1994 | |
Gareth enters an international cookery competition in Lyon, France. All the dishes must have ingredients exclusively from the originating country - but where will he get English wine?!? |
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original air date | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
15 | "Gareth's True Love" | Dewi Humphreys | Geoff Deane | 25 November 1996 | |
Gareth has had to sell Le Chateau Anglais to Cyril Bryson. There's a troublesome new American chef named Savannah in the kitchen. Then Janice suddenly tells Gareth that she's leaving him, prompting him to resign in efforts to get her back. | |||||
16 | "Reeny/Renée" | Dewi Humphreys | Paul Makin | 2 December 1996 | |
When Renée, Cyril's spoiled daughter arrives at the restaurant, Gareth is forced into letting her help out in the kitchen. Everton is smitten by Renée and will do anything to keep her from being removed from her position. | |||||
17 | "Lessons in Talking" | Dewi Humphreys | Paul Makin | 9 December 1996 | |
With Janice having moved out on him and with talk of divorce in the air, Gareth takes his temper out on the diners when Cyril has made a policy decision that Gareth should mingle and chat with the clientele at Le Chateau. This is decidedly not what Gareth would prefer. | |||||
18 | "Love in the Air" | Dewi Humphreys | Geoff Deane | 16 December 1996 | |
The arrival of Gareth's father is not the tonic he needs to help him overcome his failed marriage, especially when he brings along his new, very attractive and very young, girlfriend. | |||||
19 | "Rochelle" | Dewi Humphreys | Geoff Deane | 23 December 1996 | |
Everton talks Gareth into catering for his cousin's wedding. One of the guests is one of Gareth's ex-girlfriends, Rochelle. An old flame looks like being rekindled, until Janice makes an unexpected appearance. | |||||
20 | "Paris? Jamaica?" | Dewi Humphreys | Paul Makin | 30 December 1996 | |
In this final episode, Gareth is at a cross road. He must decide whether to accept Rochelle's invitation to join her in Paris for the weekend or to fly off to Jamaica to try to patch things up with Janice. Gareth foolishly relies upon the advice of Everton to help him make a decision on his future. |
According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, the show was "highly critically acclaimed for its high production values, its comic-drama scripts, and its lead performances. Most of all, perhaps, the series [was] a landmark programme in the sense that Henry plays a character who just happens to be black; the fact of his blackness does not limit the narrative or the audience the series reaches." [2]
BFI's screenonline noted that "what really marked out Chef!, however, was Henry's development as an actor. As the kitchen tyrant Gareth Blackstock, he proved himself capable of representing a multifaceted character far beyond the caricatures of his sketch shows." [1] It also noted that Chef! "managed some acute observations on food and contemporary Britain: the celebritisation of cuisine, the pathological obsession with hygiene, the near impossibility of securing genuinely excellent produce in a culture dominated by industrial farming and supermarket giants." [1]
Some contemporary critics were less positive, however. Reviewing the second series in the Evening Standard , Victor Lewis-Smith described it as "...not funny enough to be classed as sit-com, nor believable enough to be classed as drama, forensic science has been unable to detect any trace of humour or subtlety in this dismal hybrid". [6]
All three series were released on Region 1 DVD on 30 August 2005. [7] The Region 2 DVDs have been available since 2 October 2006. [8] Several minutes of the first series episode "The Big Cheese" were missing from the Region 2 DVD release. This was due to a mastering error; corrected replacement discs were later offered by the BBC. The Region 1 release is full and uncut.
Spaced is a British television sitcom created, written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright, about the comedic, and sometimes surreal and action-packed, misadventures of Daisy Steiner and Tim Bisley, two twenty-something Londoners who, despite only having just met, decide to move in together after she gives up on squatting and he is kicked out by his ex-girlfriend. Supporting roles include Nick Frost as Tim's best friend Mike, Katy Carmichael as Daisy's best friend Twist, Mark Heap as lodger Brian who lives downstairs and Julia Deakin as landlady Marsha.
Sir Lenworth George Henry is an English comedian, actor and writer. He gained success as a stand-up comedian and impressionist in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in The Lenny Henry Show in 1984. He was the most prominent black British comedian of the time and much of his material served to celebrate and parody his African-Caribbean roots.
The Young Ones is a British sitcom written by Rik Mayall, Ben Elton, and Lise Mayer, starring Adrian Edmondson, Mayall, Nigel Planer, Christopher Ryan, and Alexei Sayle, and broadcast on BBC Two for two series, first shown in 1982 and 1984. The show focused on the lives of four dissimilar students and their landlord's family on different plots that often included anarchic, offbeat, surreal humour. The show often included slapstick gags, visual humour and surreal jokes sometimes acted out by puppets, with each episode also featuring a notable selection of guest stars and musical numbers from various performers.
Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama television series adapted by Clive Exton from P. G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. It aired on the ITV network from 22 April 1990 to 20 June 1993, with the last series nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. Set in the UK and the US in an unspecified period between the late 1920s and the 1930s, the series starred Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, an affable young gentleman and member of the idle rich, and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his highly intelligent and competent valet. Bertie and his friends, who are mainly members of the Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable Jeeves.
Christopher Richard Stein, is an English celebrity chef, restaurateur, writer and television presenter. Along with business partner Jill Stein, he runs the Stein hotel and restaurant business in the UK. The business has a number of renowned restaurants, shops and hotels in Padstow along with other restaurants in Marlborough, Winchester and Barnes. He is also the head chef and a co-owner of the "Rick Stein at Bannisters" restaurants in Mollymook and Port Stephens in Australia, with his second wife, Sarah. He writes cookery books and has presented numerous cookery series for the BBC.
Crossroads is a British television soap opera that ran on ITV over two periods – the original 1964 to 1988 run, followed by a short revival from 2001 to 2003. Set in a fictional motel in the Midlands, Crossroads became a byword for low production values, particularly in the 1970s and early 1980s. Despite this, the series regularly attracted huge audiences during this time, with viewership numbers reaching as high as 15 million viewers.
The Wednesday Play is an anthology series of British television plays which ran on BBC1 for six seasons from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually original works written for television, although dramatic adaptations of fiction also featured. The series gained a reputation for presenting contemporary social dramas, and for bringing issues to the attention of a mass audience that would not otherwise have been discussed on screen.
Armchair Theatre is a British television drama anthology series of single plays that ran on the ITV network from 1956 to 1974. It was originally produced by ABC Weekend TV. Its successor Thames Television took over from mid-1968.
Fairly Secret Army is a British sitcom which ran to thirteen episodes over two series between 1984 and 1986. Though not a direct spin-off from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, the lead character, Major Harry Truscott, was very similar to Geoffrey Palmer's character of Jimmy Anderson from that series, who himself featured in a scene where he tried to recruit Reggie to a secret army with very similar aims to Truscott's.
Play of the Month is a BBC television anthology series, which ran from 1965 to 1983 featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays which were usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted regularly from October 1965 to May 1979, before returning for the summer seasons of 1982 and 1983. The producer most associated with the Play of the Month series was Cedric Messina. Thirteen productions were also shown previously or subsequently on BBC2 in the period 1971-73 under Stage 2. Productions were broadcast in colour from November 1969.
Special Branch is a British television series made by Thames Television for ITV and shown between 1969-1970 and 1973-1974. A police drama series, the action was centred on members of the Special Branch counterintelligence and counterterrorism department of the London Metropolitan Police. The first two series starred Derren Nesbitt, before the programme went through an overhaul, with George Sewell taking over as the new lead.
The F Word is a British cookery programme featuring chef Gordon Ramsay. The programme covers a wide range of topics, from recipes to food preparation and celebrity food fads. The programme was made by Optomen Television and aired weekly on Channel 4. The theme tune for the series is "The F-Word" from the Babybird album Bugged.
Saturday Kitchen is a "weekend food show" typically broadcast on Saturday mornings between 10:00 and 11:30 on BBC One.
Alfresco is a British sketch comedy television series starring Robbie Coltrane, Ben Elton, Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Siobhan Redmond and Emma Thompson, produced by Granada Television and broadcast by ITV from 1 May 1983 to 2 June 1984. Running for two series, it totalled 13 episodes and was named Alfresco because, unusually for a comedy sketch show of the time, it was shot on location rather than in a studio.
The Dick Emery Show is a British sketch comedy show starring Dick Emery. It was broadcast on the BBC from 1963 to 1981. It was directed and produced by Harold Snoad. The show was broadcast over 18 series with 166 episodes. The show experienced sustained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. The BBC described the show as featuring 'a vivid cast of comic grotesques'.
A Kick Up the Eighties is a British comedy sketch show originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1981 to 1984. It starred Robbie Coltrane, Tracey Ullman, Richard Stilgoe, Miriam Margolyes, Rik Mayall, Ron Bain and Roger Sloman.
Roger Griffiths is an English actor who has had several roles in television.
Sorry, I'm a Stranger Here Myself is a British sitcom that aired for two seasons from 15 June 1981 to 18 May 1982. It was co-created by actor David Firth and Shelley and It Takes a Worried Man creator Peter Tilbury. The first series was co-written by Firth and Tilbury, and the second one by Firth alone.
Delicious is a series that premiered on Sky 1 on 30 December 2016. Written by Dan Sefton and directed by Clare Kilner and John Hardwick, the four-part first series aired on Sky 1 from December 2016 to January 2017. Sky renewed the show for a second series in February 2017. The second series aired on Sky 1 from Friday, 29 December 2017. On 13 February 2018, it was announced that Delicious had been renewed for a third season.