TV review

EVERYONE'S taking advantage of Channel 4. First the BBC pinches its chief executive Mark Thompson as its new Director General. Now the channel finds that ITV has been using C4's Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares as a trailer for its own new reality show Hell's Kitchen.

That was the series in which the foul-mouthed chef tried to sort out restaurants in trouble. For the next two weeks, he's in charge of a kitchen-full of celebrities who can't cook or take orders.

They say if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen. Viewers may be heading for the exit after a less-than-inspiring opening to the series. It was pandemonium in the kitchen and the show didn't seem much more organised, with far too little cooking and not even that much swearing compared to chef Ramsay's usual act.

This was clearly a case of too many cooks, although an unfortunate accident meant the end of one cook, namely Roger Cook, by the end of programme one. His fall from grace, when a chair collapsed beneath him, led to a knee injury that's put him out of the show for good.

The other celebrities have been left to battle on without him in the kitchen as presenter Angus Deayton wanders around the specially-constructed restaurant in search of something interesting to say.

Celebrity diner Daniella Westbrook, we were told, had been waiting two hours for her starter, after Ramsay had sent it back to the kitchen three times. I was hungry for something to happen, apart from Ramsay screaming four-letter words of the f and s variety.

If anyone expected to learn anything about cooking, they were disappointed. The ten celebrities began two weeks ago and that time had seemingly been compressed into less than an hour of television.

We discovered that ex-Corrie and current Bad Girls actress Amanda Barrie can't make an omelette ("I've never seen that come out of an omelette before" said Ramsay, surveying foam emanating from the dish) and that ex-Brookside babe Jennifer Ellison isn't keen on killing lobsters. "Now take its arse out," ordered Ramsay after she had reluctantly delivered the coup de grace.

More sensitive viewers may well have objected to seeing lobsters having a carving knife shoved in their head and assassinated.

Having removed any notion of teaching us to cook, Hell's Kitchen offers little else. The idea is clearly I'm A Celebrity - Get Me Out Of Here! with more swearing and fancier food than beetles and grasshoppers.

Even Ramsay was more uncommunicative than usual, too busy to talk to Deayton when asked during the live part of the show how things were going in the kitchen (although we already knew the answer - badly).

Things may improve once things settle down. At the moment this latest reality show is falling as flat as Edwina Currie's souffle.

Huddersfield and Coming Around Again

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

TWO plays, eight actors and one new writing festival under the umbrella title Northern Exposure.

Huddersfield, by Serbian playwright Ugljesa Sajtinac in Chris Thorpe's English version, is a raw and gritty slice of life.

Coming Around Again: The Armley Story - playing in repertoire in the Courtyard Theatre - is a slice of Northern life or rather, lives, as the piece looks at three love stories in the same terraced house in 1910, 1960 and 2004.

The two premieres couldn't be more different in approach or execution. Huddersfield, directed by Alex Chisholm, has an edgy, contemporary realism that acts like a punch in the face.

The return home of Igor after ten years living in England - in Huddersfield - triggers off the dissatisfaction of Rasha (John Lightbody's angry young man) with his life in Serbia. Much smoking, drinking and swearing follows as family and friends face up to what's wrong with their lives.

If Andrew G Marshall's Coming Around Again, a story of stern fathers, loving sons and disturbed daughters, seems the more ordinary that's not to deny its technical daring. In Sarah Punshon's production the three stories are played out, in and around each other, at the same time.

Two modern-day students set up home with the shadow of a possessive father looming over them. In 1910, an unmarried girl has to tell her father she's pregnant. In 1960, a loving son's behaviour comes between his father and mother.

The actors, who play two, three or even four parts over the two plays, display versatility (and the ability for quick changes) in this ambitious new Northern writing venture.

Steve Pratt

l Until June 5. Tickets 0113-2137700