As for the shouting, Ramsay’s onscreen eruptions were once infamous, but, here, he seems more measured and therefore more credible and watchable.įood Stars itself comes across as somewhat derivative – The Apprentice with a full tummy and a pinch of Million Pound Menu thrown in? – but it’s not without interest and amusement. It seems either Ramsay is a changed man or he’s belatedly twigged the worth of the tempeh pound. Some of the entrepreneurs are vegan, which surprises me: I remember Ramsay, years ago, on a previous show, tricking a vegetarian man into eating Parma ham on a pizza, behaviour that was… (excuse me, the lawyers need a word)… erm, entirely open to your own personal interpretation. “My own money!” he keeps insisting, as if unable to believe it himself. The point, it seems, is “leaps of faith” and, soon enough, 12 food and drink entrepreneurs are throwing themselves from Cornish rocks into seawater to avoid getting sent home first and to prove they’re worthy of the final prize of Ramsay’s £150,000 investment. Has TV chef Gordon Ramsay finally stopped shouting? Watching his new BBC One eight-part series, Gordon Ramsay’s Future Food Stars, I was struck by the eerie calm and that’s factoring in Ramsay making an entrance by jumping into the Cornish sea from a helicopter. Transcending the average dramedy, it evolves into an examination of co-dependency writ large on Vegas billboards blood on the dressing room floor.Īvoiding boiling point: Gordon Ramsay. Vance might be a muumuu-clad monster, but she’s also a shrewd motivational fireball, at one point hissing at Daniels: “You have to scratch and claw and it never fucking ends!” There’s a mid-series lull, where the intense comic energy slumps, but, generally, Hacks socks a vigorous tragicomic punch. Daniels may be a know-it-all Gen Z-er who despairs of her new gig (“Ava, she needs jokes on side salad”), but she has the fresh eye (comedy, feminism, life) Vance needs. Comedies about comedy sometimes choke on their own meta – is it funny or “funny”? – but here, the creative grind is only the start. Set mainly on the boulevard of slot machines and shattered dreams that is Vegas, over 10 episodes, Hacks is chock-full of scene-stealers, including Deborah’s dizzy daughter (Kaitlin Olson), and the sparky double act of agent Jimmy and assistant Kayla, played by Downs and Megan Stalter.īut it’s Smart and Einbinder’s spreading bruise of a relationship that keeps you riveted. What unfolds is an odd-couple generational psychodrama cum showbiz redemption story that runs on fear – of ageing and failure – but stamps on sentimentality with hobnail boots. Enter Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), a twentysomething LA writer, who’s tanked her career with an ill-judged tweet and who tells Vance at their fractious first meeting: “The last thing on Earth I want to do is move to the desert to write lame jokes for an old hack.” ![]() ![]() With her Vegas residency threatened, Vance comes across as an upcycled Norma Desmond meets a crankier Joan Rivers: there’s the sulphurous whiff of faded glories as she shuffles around her plasterboard Versailles mansion, but she’s damned if she’s going to go quietly. Jean Smart ( Mare of Easttown Fargo) won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for her portrayal of veteran Las Vegas comic Deborah Vance, whose career has become a death rattle of sparkly trouser suits, dusty one-liners and QVC hustles.
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