Chef! (serious profession) is a show about Garreth Blackstock, (Lenny Henry) the arrogant, tyrannical, hard driven chef at an English restaurant. His dream of owning his own restaurant comes true when he gets the chance to buy his place of employment, Le Chateau Anglais. He is married to Janice (Caroline Lee Johnson) and for two out of the three series they run the restaurant. The show is based around their life running the restaurant and Chef's overzealous and highly vocal management of his kitchen staff. His cooking skills and reputation are above question and much of the show's humor revolves around his failings in every other area of life: his disregard for customers, verbal abuse of the kitchen help and neglecting Janice. Blackstock is dedicated to cooking and everything else comes second. ("Let me put things in perspective for you" Chef says to one of the kitchen staff, "On the evolutionary scale of cooking, I am Einstein and you are a mud dwelling, uni cellular speck of jelly with a predilection for consuming its own excrement.") Although Chef is the best in England he is stressed, high strung, and frequently loses his temper. He is obsessed with making perfect meals but feels he is hampered by incompetent help. ("Are you going to make table seven's gravy or should we just put it in an envelope and mail it to them?") Much of Chef's verbal abuse is aimed at Everton, a Jamaican born young man who came to work for free to learn the trade and be in the kitchen of the great Garreth Blackstock. Everton makes his share of mistakes; losing a band aid in someone's food, serving up dishwater as soup, and releasing 50 pounds of live crayfish in the kitchen. But he is an expert in Caribbean cooking and sometimes Chef has to humble himself and admit Everton has redeeming qualities. The main thrust of the comedy is Chef is so sure of himself he gets into awkward situations then has to get himself out. For example, Janice arranges for Garreth to be interviewed on an Oprah type show and once on the air he spends most of the time criticizing Janice's cooking. Chef finds it difficult to make friends or engage in small talk and rarely treats anyone with the same respect he shows for food. ("This wine doesn't have a bouquet, it has a smell" he says to the wine steward. "A bouquet has flowery and fruity scents, it promises delights to come. This smells like the interior of a Datsun minivan. It doesn't promise, it threatens.") As the show evolved a softer side began to surface and you get the feeling underneath the verbal tornado, Blackstock really is a decent guy. He even manages to strike up a friendship with Everton. As series 2 came to a close his business acumen doesn't equal his ambitions and he is forced to sell the restaurant. His obsession with food coupled with his rude and sarcastic nature puts his marriage under strain and eventually Janice leaves him. The kitchen staff changes from series to series and towards the end they play a more important role than in the first two series. Some of Chef's verbal bite is toned down in series 3 and in my view once the formula of the show was changed, it never recovered the acerbic wit that made me turn up the volume and sit glued to the edge of the chair as I waited for Blackstock's next verbal explosion. Taken in total however, Chef is a first class show. Lenny Henry was outstanding in the lead role and he intentionally made no reference to the fact that he is black, a deliberate ploy which made its point subtly. Chef is a wordy show with no sight gags or slapstick humor so it appeals to the intellectual side of the funny bone. Short lived (20 episodes) and with a weak final series, Chef is, in my opinion, one of the better offerings to come from England in the 1990s.