Being Gordon Ramsay review – did we really need six hours of him setting up restaurants?

This six-part extended brand advert follows the TV chef’s attempt to launch numerous eateries under one roof. It’s a lot of restaurant drama to have in your life Six hours of advertising yourself on Netflix and – presumably – getting paid for providing streamer content at the same time? Nice work if you can get it, and Gordon Ramsay has got it. Being Gordon Ramsay, a six part – six part – documentary, follows the chef ’n’ TV personality as he embarks on his most ambitious venture yet. It’s “A huge undertaking”, “high risk, high reward”, a “once in a lifetime opportunity” and “one of my final stakes in the ground … If it fails, I’m fucked.” It is opening seven billion (five, but it feels like seven billion) restaurants on the top floors of 22 Bishopsgate at once. There is going to be a 60-seat rooftop garden place with retractable roof, a 250-seater Asian-inflected restaurant called Lucky Cat, a Bread Street Kitchen brasserie and a culinary school. But we begin with a family scene. The youngest of Ramsay’s six children with wife of 30 years, Tana, are having pancakes. Gordon thinks they are too thick. They’re American-style, not the crepes he thinks they should have. “Darling,” says Tana, not for the first time even that morning, you suspect, “Could you just give it a rest?” Continue reading...

By Lucy Mangan