The Chefs' Brigade
This is a British cookery show. They take a bunch of people who cook for a living but who have basic skills. These people are paired with a chef who has four Michelin stars and eighteen restaurants. They visit different restaurants around Europe to have competitions to cook that restaurant's own food.
Things I enjoy about it: it does a good job of showing that people who have somewhat fucked up lives will always find a place in cheffing. They could have stayed in the UK but they decided to go around Europe.[1] There's a couple of incidents of poor behaviour being corrected (some of the women chefs are ignored and spoken over by some men, the women stand up for themselves and get an apology).
Things I don't like: there's some cheffy bollocks around the pressure and discipline of a brigade; it's still a reality-show competition and that introduces some artificiallity; they send people home each week and I always hate that aspect of programmes.
It's available on Pirate Bay.
Here are some reviews which I think are fair.
https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/the-chefs-brigade-bbc2-episode-1-review-jason-atherton/
[1] I can't describe how pathologically awful Brexit has been for the UK. :-(
I tend to find chefs from the Marco Pierre White/Gordon Ramsey lineage somewhat unpalatable. That whole alpha-male (well, alpha-person - I would not want to get on the wrong side of Clare Smith) aggressive bullshit thing really jars with me.
That said, I'll probably still check this out, so thanks for the heads up. I'm jonesing for some half-decent cooking TV since the Best Masterchef[1] finished for the year a few months back.
Also, yes. God knows what's going to happen to our currently thriving food scene when we can't afford to import nice stuff and nobody wants to come and work here.
[1] Australia. Once you go Masterchef AU you don't go back. It's so much better than any other version of the format I've seen.
So, for cooking and chefs who aren't arseholes I tend to watch The Staff Canteen on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/user/StaffCanteen/videos
EG, this, from 5 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Akcgh5cWw7Y
Oh, that looks good, thanks.
On a slightly less fine dining tip (and don't get me wrong, I'm all for fine dining) I'm a fairly dedicated fan of Bon Appetit but largely only because of Brad and Claire. I also like SortedFood and the whole matey-London-geezer thing isn't normally my kind of thing but the guys have grown on me and I find them more endearing than annoying.