Right, I’m busy working all afternoon and evening so I won’t get to see this this afternoon. I largely suspect it’s going to lose something in translation (“a slightly ridiculous sense of fun”, probably) but I live in hope.
Allez cuisine! Etc.
Edit: Just got in from work, will watch this before I go to bed and offer some opinion tomorrow.
Edit edit: I confess my knowledge of Iron Chef boils (HAHAHA) down to those episodes Challenge showed several years ago, I’m about ten minutes in so far…
- One word for the future chaps: Steadycam, yeah?
- Olly and Nick are quite good commentators.
- The atmosphere is all wrong, it could do with an audience I think, or at least something to feel a more like a stadium and less of a large TV studio.
- BEEF!
Edit edit edit: Basically the show is a bit underdone in some parts, and a bit overcooked in others. I’ll just let you take that in for a bit.
Will they have retro Japenese graphics like in ‘Banzai!’?
Soz, that was me, forgot to add a name
I have managed not to see any adverts for it, although a colleague suggests it looks mental. Which is probably a good thing.
Looks alright from this little minute it’s been on
Loving the puns.
Morsel Combat is my favourite.
BEEF!
Best saying of it… EVER!
Iron Chef America beats it I do believe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJXiJvEF0EA#t=191
Yeah, it’s not JUST beef, but shh.
Or, channeling the spirit of Beadle, Henderson, Robbins, Spikey et al, possibly better still:
I like the fact that people seem perfectly happy just to put up Chairman reveals on Youtube.
I like our Chairman, he doesn’t do very much, but what he does do is own the camera whenever he’s on with a cheeky twinkle in his eye. Well done, whoever you are.
Mmm. It’s good on its own merits, but it’s not authentic… yet. Yes, it’s over-produced, but it’s not quite over-produced enough, and I have a suspicion that a bigger budget would help considerably.
Initial impressions of the humans are fairly favourable. Martin Blunos has the look, though when he starts talking he loses his iron. Perhaps he shares more than just initials with Mario Batali? I like Nick Nairn; he’s very technical.Olly Smith… well, close your eyes and he could be Edward Tudor-Pole, nearly, and I have a suspicion that he has been chosen more because he looks like Alton Brown than anything else. The dynamic between Nairn and Smith is the other way around to that of Iron Chef US, with the technical one being the roving reporter and the main host being the colour guy.
The format… hmm. Well, there’s still four dishes on each side, it’s just that the challenger’s side has them made by different people. The mid-point tasting and judgment sort of makes sense televisually, though it’s weird to think of the Iron Chef stopping cooking for long enough to be judged, then going back to cooking. The preamble show isn’t really going anywhere by itself, but by the time there’s the big authentic battle on Friday, then we’ll have some degree of feeling and backstory behind whichever challenger wins, so that may turn out well.
The bit that got me… I don’t know whether this is part of the show, or whether it was just to do with the video grabbing process, but the corners (and, to a lesser extent, the edges) of the screen seem to have been darkened artificially. That’s horrible, bordering on headache-inducing. (Admittedly, I wasn’t watching the show, or even 4OD, which serves up one commercial to me and then goes no further. I was watching a version that someone had kindly put up on YouTube; it’s possible that this was an effect that they had added. I kind of hope it was.)
Well I was watching it on 4oD on Virgin last night and it’s not something I had noticed (but that’s not to say it’s not there). The camerawork was what got me – surely the most nausea inducing since that Panorama on quiz TV they did a few years ago.
A host, a commentator, a different voiceover, 2 judges and one dude with a Japanese accent. And that’s before we get to the contestants, the Iron Chef’s and the kitchen assistants.
I think they could do with a few more spare parts!
The Chairman is wicked, though.
He is quite awesome, but I personally don’t think he’s as good as Chairman Mark. He’s better than William Shatner though.
So if the challenger on Friday wins, they in a LIFECHANGING £1,000.
Nice one, Channel 4.
I don’t mind so much about the level of the prize (I gather there basically isn’t one in other versions of the show), although I’m slightly baffled that if you’re going to have four competitions in the days leading up to the final, the prize for the final isn’t determined by how many days the challengers win as a team.
This being said, the show is growing on me. “FOOD MEETS JUDGEMENT… FUDGEMENT” made me laugh quite a lot.
I’m reckoning it could possibly be, it’s just that the Iron Chefs have won both already and so they haven’t bothered to mention it.
Let’s hope it never meets luck.
New gripe: we really don’t need background music while the cooking is going on. The “starter” music on Tuesday was horribly clashy, though the “main course” music wasn’t so bad.
New praise: Olly Smith… you know, I think he just about gets away with it. Hurrah!
I don’t know, if he hasn’t used the phrase “it’s FOODEGEDDON!” by the end of the week then I might have to give up.
I am disappointed that nobody has yet put the booyah into bouillabaisse, but there’s still time.
Wednesday
Iron PORK! UK: 0.7m (6.2%)
Ratings Bear wants to eat Olly Smith, NOW! GRRRR!
Iron Chef UK, Battle… Olly Smith?
Oh dear, in that timeslot that is pretty horrific.