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'Chef Academy,'
sweeter to the taste

Bravo cooking series presents likeable characters

By Tom Conroy
Nov 16, 2009

If a TV show is manipulative, that’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. A genial addition to Bravo’s lineup of cutthroat reality competition shows, “Chef Academy” is very manipulative, but it’s also very good at it.

In the series, premiering tonight at 11 p.m., Jean-Christophe Novelli, a British-based Frenchman who, we are told, has been voted “the world’s sexiest chef,” takes on nine American students, who range from trained professionals to enthusiastic amateurs.

The manipulation starts with the auditions by the prospective students, who are interviewed and then asked to make an egg dish. Novelli selects some who have clearly failed the test because, he says, he likes them. They happen to be among the more telegenic participants.

Suzanne, a 46-year-old housewife who describes herself as “a big, blond, fluffy hairball out of Orange County,” will be a viewer favorite, as will Carissa, 26, who says she signed up because her future mother-in-law told her she had to learn to cook.

It’s easier for the amateur foodies in the audience to identify with people like that than with the pros who tend to populate shows like “Top Chef” and “Hell’s Kitchen.”

The best-trained participant, on the other hand, comes across as arrogant, so viewers will have someone to root against as well.

In Novelli, the producers have found a truly rare thing: a likable Frenchman.

Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Novelli asks his new assistant if he thinks he will be able to meet “the biggest star ever…Columbo,” then launches into a decent Peter Falk impersonation (“‘Uh, can I ask you a question?...Just one more thing.’ He close the door and he come back again.”)

“I am determined to transform them from cook to chef,” Novelli says of the nine contestants he has selected. Unlike those cooking shows mentioned above, “Chef Academy” doesn’t seem to be mostly about humiliating incompetents. In fact, although each episode will feature a cooking test, the contestants have to fail three times before they are eliminated.

Novelli’s choice of winner in the first test—the contestants are asked to make their signature dish, which, along with the product placements, could make viewers think they’re watching “Top Chef”—seems more driven by dramatic than by culinary imperatives, but it’s still a nice moment.

On the other hand, the producers’ choice to cast an assistant for Novelli is questionable. Josh is a stereotypical gay-seeming gofer (a gayfer?) who doesn’t add much besides bragging that he once was “Miss Tori Spelling’s assistant.”

Viewers have probably stopped expecting to learn any cooking techniques from this type of show, but we do get a tip on how to mince garlic.

“Chef Academy” is definitely cutting back on the amounts of back-stabbing and abuse, but it’s a pleasant change to get cooking without all the agita.

Tom Conroy is a Connecticut writer and longtime TV critic.	© 2010 Media Life Magazine

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