Why was Jamie's Chef not a patch on Jamie Oliver's two previous series—Jamie's Kitchen and Jamie's School Dinners? The answer lies in the history of how Jamie Oliver became a television phenomenon.
Jamie was first spotted in 1997, when he appeared in a documentary about the River Café. His own series—The Naked Chef—soon followed. The smart thing about The Naked Chef was the character of Jamie—a disrespectful 23 year old with a down-to-earth attitude towards cooking. Unafraid to use mass-produced ingredients in his recipes, Jamie changed the idea of a cookery programme, producing something suitable for a generation that hadn't been taught how to cook. The series was a great success, and a second and third followed, along with inevitable book tie-ins.
At some stage during the production of The Naked Chef, Jamie decided that he wanted his own production company, and so in 2000 set up Fresh One Productions. And it was with this hat on that he went to talk to the head of BBC2, Jane Root, about his next series—in which he would train young people to become chefs.
Jamie wanted Fresh One to make the series, but Root felt he needed a more experienced company, and directed him to Talkback, a large independent. Unfortunately for Root, Jamie also signed a contract to make adverts for Sainsbury's. The BBC felt this was incompatible with his presenting a BBC2 series, and so Talkback took the idea to Channel 4.
It was this authenticity that made the series so gripping. We saw Jamie furious when his trainees came back from the market with inferior ingredients, we saw him persuading the more recalcitrant ones to come to work, we saw him rescuing disasters in the kitchen. What came across was his passion, his refusal to give up on his trainees and his apparently permanent presence in the unfolding drama.
Much of the credit should go to the series' producer, Peter Moore. Although an experienced documentary-maker, Moore had never produced a cookery series. He came from the "warts and all" school of filmmaking. There was a hint that this might be a problem on the first day of filming. Jamie was making cheese on toast. When it went wrong, he said, "Oh fuck"—and looked to Moore to shoot an expletive-free retake. Moore just said, "That's a wrap."
There were battles throughout the filming. Moore was irritated that Jamie was off in New York or filming Sainsbury's ads when he felt he should be looking after his trainees—it was part of Moore's editing skill to make Jamie appear more involved than he was. Moore didn't think Jamie should give his trainees the second and third chances he did, but fortunately Jamie's view prevailed. And there were many arguments during the edit—especially over the way Jamie was portrayed.
Such conflict is an essential ingredient of the creative process that produces great programmes. But as a person used to total control of his kitchen, it did not come easily to Jamie, as he admitted recently on Radio 4's Front Row. He said he hated making television programmes and expressed astonishment that he couldn't control his appearance in them. Which brings us to the recent series, Jamie's Chef.
Jamie's Chef, which was made by Jamie's production company, followed a group of aspiring chefs competing for the right to run a restaurant. It was perfectly competent, albeit slightly formulaic and, one suspects, relied on Jamie's celebrity to attract viewers. Jamie appeared much less than he did in Jamie's Kitchen, he was far better behaved, and didn't have anything like the passion he showed in the earlier series. Jamie had control, but it was much less interesting television.
Jamie's Chef was in the hands of Robert Thirkell—a highly skilled television practitioner who, among other things, invented Blood on the Carpet for the BBC. The new series had plenty of jeopardy—one of the key ingredients of such programmes—but the jeopardy was not Jamie's. In both Jamie's Kitchen and Jamie's School Dinners, he really had something at stake—his own money in the first and his reputation in the second. And, of course, the outcome was to enhance Jamie's reputation. Everyone knew that the state of school meals was a scandal—but it needed something like Jamie's School Dinners to ignite it as a political issue.
Jamie did not do this single-handedly, but that's the way the narrative has been written. He is no longer a chef on a mission; he is a public figure. So how much easier it must now be for him to get his way with commissioning editors; how much easier to get control. If The Naked Chef was Jamie's first television age and Jamie's Kitchen and School Dinners his second, we are now moving to his third—in which he stops being a practitioner and becomes a presenter. But it is much less interesting to watch.
