Ramsay’s balancing act
QUESTIONS I’d never dare ask my wife: (1) Do you think I’d suit a goatee? (2) How about we give this year? Cornwall a miss (3)Would you like to sit down with me tonight and watch a new game show hosted by Gordon Ramsay, the famous sweary chef?
So it’s a good job I’m sent previews to watch in advance, because starting tonight on BBC1 is GORDON RAMSAY’S BANK BALANCE (9pm), a new game show hosted by Gordon Ramsay, the famous sweary chef, and this way we don’t have to have that conversation. So how exactly does it work? The programme, I mean, not a TV industry that thinks we want a Gordon Ramsay game show on prime-time BBC1.
Well, essentially, what the contestants have to do here is answer some questions. If they answer these questions correctly, they win themselves some pretendmetal bars worth various amounts of money.
The contestants must then carefully stack these pretend-metal bars on a see-sawing board-type contraption, hoping it doesn’t tip over and send the whole lot crashing to the floor. If it tips over and sends the whole lot crashing to the floor, bang goes their chance of winning £100,000.
And what about the host?What’s his role in all this?What does Gordon Ramsay bring to the party? “What the contestants need,” Gordon says, “is a cuddly, fluffy game show host by their side. Well, they’ve got ME!” Ho-hum.
Elsewhere tonight we reach the final episode of THE BAY (ITV, 9pm) with a good many pertinent questions still to be answered.
Not just the question we have had since the fourth minute of the first episode – namely, who shot Stephen thingummy on his doorstep? – but all kinds of supplementary questions.
Who, for example, hired the killer to carry out the murder? What was the motive of the person doing the hiring? Just how dodgy are the various members of the victim’s family?
And the most important question of the series, can you really park for free on Morecambe seafront, the way DC Lisa Armstrong does whenever she pulls up outside her flat?
As is customary with ITV police dramas, we’ve been led up all manner of cul-de-sacs these past few weeks. Personally, I was convinced I’d identified the culprit by episode three, on the basis we kept seeing the person in question pulling a funny face. Funny as in weird, I mean.
Obviously I should have known better.As ever, most of the crucial questions in The Bay remain unanswered until about 20 minutes from the end of this final episode.
The rest I’m still struggling to figure out 20 minutes after. But I think that’s just me being dim.