Gordon Ramsay review – Did we really need six hours of him preparing restaurants? | TV and radio

SNine hours of advertising yourself on Netflix and – presumably – getting paid to provide streaming content at the same time? Nice job if you can get it, and Gordon Ramsay got it. Being Gordon Ramsay, Part 6 – Six part – A documentary that follows the TV chef as he embarks on his most ambitious project yet. It’s a “huge undertaking”, “high risk, high reward”, “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”, and “one of my last stakes on Earth…and if I fail, I’m out”. It’s opening seven billion restaurants (five, but it feels like seven billion) on the upper floors of 22 Bishopsgate at one time. There will be a 60-seat roof garden with a retractable roof, a 250-seat Asian restaurant called Lucky Cat, Bread Street Kitchen and a cooking school.

But we start with a family scene. The youngest of Ramsay’s six children with his wife Tana, 30, eats pancakes. Gordon thinks it’s too thick. It’s American style, not the crepes they think they should have. “Honey,” Tana says, not even for the first time that morning, “can you give her a break?”

Ramsay’s defining characteristic, of course, is that he can’t. No Michelin-starred chef could do that. They weren’t made that way. When he’s with his kids, he’s completely with his kids (“Megan is 27, twins Holly and Jack are 25, Matilda is 23, Oscar is six, and Jessie James is 18 months. Did I miss any of them? Thank you for that”). He runs and jumps and plays with the little ones, plans weddings and engagement parties and buys the chef’s opening white dishes with the grown-ups – he seems inexhaustible, and it is clear that they, like Tana, adore him, while also (in the case of the grown-ups at least) having a firm grip on the man.

The same thing—at least in this expanded ad for the Ramsay brand—is essentially true of business. His chefs respect him for having walked the walk, talked the talk, and they all strive to do their best, whether for him or — since they’re all cut from the same perfect cloth as Ramsay — just… because.

We watch these people adhere to an abstract ideal – to an idea so unfashionable that it quickly becomes unfathomable – that everyone should perform to the highest standards at all times because that is the right thing to do and that saves being Gordon Ramsay from being (as the man himself might say) absolute nonsense. And then there’s the simple pleasure of watching them create the most delicious dishes you’ll ever eat, if you can afford them – with knowledge and skill that’s almost delicious to watch.

Six hours of the many dramas involved in setting up and running five businesses at the same time seems like too much – each building needs to be designed and built from scratch and a retractable roof added to one. But it allows at least an appreciation of the attention to detail that must be paid to a successful launch. The menus and tastings—you can’t make the rum baba too small or it won’t aerate properly—are only part of it. There are pockets in the prototype aprons that need to be removed because Ramsay knows the wait staff naturally fills them with bits and pieces and they quickly look dirty. There is objection to adding leather seating to a restaurant design, which takes up space and could cost the restaurant two covers, or £300 a night. There are a million other things and Ramsay is in all of them. Does he have time to formulate every decision in soft words? No. Is he unnecessarily rude? No and no. There is a reason for everything he does, he gives it, and he moves on. You have to have a good sense of self and a lot of confidence to handle it, sure, but if not, I’m of the school of thought that says this is you’re problem, not him. It is nonetheless a Marmite proposition, that’s for sure, and an entire sociology unit could be written about it and people’s reactions to it.

Meanwhile, there’s this fluffy nonsense with occasional nuggets of insight. Enjoy or not. No offense, but Ramsay has better things to worry about.