In this second series of 8 episodes of Gordon Ramsey's The f Word, he emphasizes his themes of good fresh food, home cooking, and conscious eating.  He brings two pigs to grow, slaughter and eat — he and his children play with them in the garden.  The emotional climax of the series comes in the penultimate episode when he is present for the slaughter of his pigs, which shakes him.  Yet most of the series is lighter in tone.  He visits ordinary people in their homes who live off junk food and gets them cooking and eating Sunday lunch together around a dinner table, helping to improve the quality of their lives.  There are many features that emphasize the link between the quality of food, the way that animals are treated, and ecology.  He has celebrity Janet Street-Porter investigate goat meat and alligator meat.  He visits Jeremy Clarkson and his family and they go out and catch lobsters.  Each week he runs a restaurant where the 50 customers can decide whether they want to pay for each course, and he has a different group of four amateur chefs doing the cooking.  Ramsey shouts and curses at them for their incompetence, and occasionally they shout back.  He also has a cook-off with a different celebrity each week where they compete in cooking a different dish.  The camera work in his home kitchen for the prepared sequences is high energy with quick editing with fast music in the background.  In the restaurant kitchen with the amateur chefs, the camera is hand-held.  Restaurant diners give their feedback about the food after each course.  It's an entertaining series largely due to Ramsey's personal charisma and the vigor of the direction. 

© 2009 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York.

Keywords: food