TV Jots

I Didn’t Even Get a Chance to See Ya

The entertainment Internets are abuzz with yesterday’s relatively big news that NBC has yanked its one and only cooking competition, The Chopping Block, from the network’s primetime schedule. The newbie aired three whole episodes, including the March 11 premiere, but happily to say, I never saw a single second of a single one of them.

Brought to us by the Peacock and Granada America, I suppose to inch in on Top Chef et al’s following, the series was hosted by United Kingdom-based chef Marco Pierre White, who looks a tad too unkempt to work anywhere near a kitchen or restaurant if you ask me.

According to Wikipedia, which we all know we can trust without reservation (*wink* *wink*), White “has been dubbed the first celebrity chef, enfant terrible of the UK restaurant scene and the Godfather of modern cooking” and he “is known as much for his quick temper as for his exceptional skills as a chef.”

Apparently, Americans disagree with at least a little of that grand characterization because only about 2.6 million of my compatriots ever bothered to tune in to “The Chopping Block.” I was one of the many turned off by the too-close resemblance to another over-dramatic, semi-realistic cooking competition on Fox. Interestingly enough, White was the 2007 head chef on the U.K. version of Hell’s Kitchen, which the Fox show is based on, of course.

The Chopping Block was airing Wednesdays at 8pm ET and will be replaced with Law & Order: Criminal Intent repeats beginning next week on April 1. The crime drama is far more my cup of tea, and when it comes to watching people demonstrating their culinary skills (or lack thereof) on television, Bravo’s Top Chef is all I need.