24 Hours to Hell and Back: Gordon Ramsay delivers food and doses of drama but with a touch of kindness
It really comes as no surprise that Gordon Ramsay's latest '24 Hours to Hell and Back' got Fox one of their more successful shows this week. The show is a classic Ramsay, but with a touch of kindness. For this show, it reminds one of Chef Ludo's 'Ludo Bites America' in ways. Like LBA, Ramsay's latest quest is to go around the country and help out restaurants that are dying out. He aims to turn the business around in just 24 hours. The series got a 1.1 rating among adults and a massive 3.7 million viewers. This was Fox's most-watched summer premiere in the last three whole years!
'24 Hours to Hell and back' is not too different than most of Ramsay's shows. The format is very similar to 'Kitchen: Impossible', 'Hotel Hell' and 'Kitchen Nightmares'. Gordon Ramsay travels across the United States, visiting failing restaurants.
They don't just focus on the menu - they revamp the whole place, bestow upon the restaurant thousands of dollars worth of cooking machinery and also retrain their staff. The difference done in just under 24 hours is quite stark.
The restaurant he picks is is no expensive restaurant - it's a place in the dumps that people have forsaken. There's no taste in the food let alone passion and these guys aren't as savvy as the 'Masterchef' winners. In fact, the condition is so dismal, Ramsay finds all kinds of old and rotten meat in the kitchen.
Ramsay brings in his own staff to teach the kitchen. His Hell on Wheels, the massive gourmet food truck that has a screen and a stage and an absolutely bonkers look, is where the magic happens. He prepares the menu there and also shows what he's found in the kitchen to the audience. This mobile kitchen is actually 70-foot-long.
For this show, his team visits the restaurant undercover, a couple of days earlier. They install some cameras and "bleep" off. The shocking revelations caught on camera are really something - from dead rats to black molds, this show doesn't hold anything back.
There's also the case of Ramsay's costumes. For the first episode, the show chose Bella Gianna's, a family-owned Italian restaurant that is under massive debt and some crazy bad attitude. So Ramsay decided to unleash his inner Italian - he gave off major "The National Lampoon" vibes in his puffy jacket, mustache, and a flat cap. Who wouldn't like to watch Ramsay dress up?
There are the classic Ramsay jokes an insults that have been added to taste, for example, as he digs into the salad and sees the presentation, he goes, "that looks like the insides of my grandfather's underpants."
As far as the scripting goes, now and then you can tell that perhaps someone is holding a piece of paper and making these owners say the lines but more or less, you forgive these telltale signs. Afterall, you're watching this show for the drama and the food and Ramsay never fails to deliver!