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Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance is most likely ridiculously huge, with all the tired programming he’s pumped out over the years. I used to enjoy Hell’s Kitchen USA for a while until they concentrated less on the food, and spent more time doing pointless outside challenges/trips and avoiding evicting someone from the contest at the end of each episode, just so they can hold it over until the next one, plus bringing evictees back later on. It just turned into complete nonsense.
That one’s on ITV2, but meanwhile, Channel 4 have been repeating Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA overnight so often, I thought the tapes were going to snap.
So… if it’s a plus, at least we have something new with Mr Ramsay… and it doesn’t involve cooking, unlike most primetime TV these days.
Because it’s an hour long, and it’s in prime-time, we need time wasted by seeing the contestants’ stories before they even step foot on the stage. When we’re introduced to Tosin and Tobi, it’s like an episode of that short-lived Fox sitcom Shovin’ Buddies. Tosin strokes his beard and horses about… or was that Tobi? It didn’t seem to matter. Before this, I’d been watching Hellraiser: Judgment, and I was hoping that Pinhead would turn up to claim my soul before it continued much further.
Ok, the lad’s name is Tobi, so at least I know who to push in the direction of the Lead Cenobite.
Tosin’s name is pronounced “Tossin'”, so like Clive Anderson’s interview with the Bee Gees when Barry Gibb revealed they were once called ‘Les Tossers’, this contestant will always be “Les Tossin'” to me…
The basics: If you want to win up to £100,000, is to take some gold bars and put them on an unbalanced board that looks like it was put together for a GCSE project. It has 12 zones, and there are 12 questions to be answered. The zone that comes up each time is down to chance. Get a question right, and you can add money, but the more you add, the more it will unbalance. There are ‘zero bars’ which add no money, but balance things out. Plus, there’s some penalty items that looks like one-ton weights.
Obviously, I can’t say whether or not this first pair win any money, but they overact like there’s no tomorrow, making a mountain out of a molehill.
Ramsay huffs and puffs like he’s trying to look excited, while the T-named siblings prove they’re young by using words at each other like “Bruh“, “fam” and “chill“.
We were in their company for most of the show before married couple Lindsey & Vicki turn up to horse about, tell us they’ve been hitched for 17 years, etc, etc. Cue the return of Shovin’ Buddies.
If a pair hasn’t yet finished their tour of duty by the end of the hour, they return for the following episode.
It’s basically like the TV gameshow equivalent of Buckaroo, the game in which you have to overload a donkey before it kicks back and throws your wares all over the place.
Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance looks like a daytime gameshow, but has a crazy amount of primetime programming. It’s showing over THREE nights per week, for THREE WEEKS, from Wednesdays to Fridays at 9pm on BBC1 from tomorrow. Yes, the BBC are betting big on this one. This is the result of a pandemic.
Oh, and at one point, Ramsay says to the contestants, “You are aware that millions are screaming at the TV right now?”
I wonder why…
Oh, and if you’re upset about the cancellation of both Fox’s sitcoms, Shovin’ Buddies and Slowly Rotating Black Man, you’ll be please to note that Tiger Woods is bringing the latter back.
Episode 1 Score: Gordon Ramsay is Creatively Bankrupt
Gordon Ramsay’s Bank Balance starts tomorrow on BBC1 at 9pm, but will not be available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD any time soon. After each episode, you can watch them on the BBC iPlayer.
Director: Richard van’t Riet
Series Producer: Jennifer Stephenson
Presenter: Gordon Ramsay
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.