TV Review: Being Gordan Ramsay is a gripping look at the nature of success

If your dream is to open a restaurant, Ramsay is here to tell you that 65% of them close within 18 months.

You don’t have to like Gordon Ramsay to enjoy Being Gordon Ramsay (Netflix).

You won’t grow to like him either after watching this, the countdown to the opening of his restaurant at the top of a skyscraper in the City of London. But he’s a gripping subject when you want to look at the nature of success.

Ramsay is successful. If you thought he was just the shouty guy that bullied American restaurant owners for a living 20 years ago, then you’ve missed his continued success in the States and online. My kids bring him up in conversation once a day, and they never watched or have even heard of Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.

Here he is spending 20 million sterling of his own money (with the help of the bank) to open a literal high-end destination that has to live up to the hype. If your dream is to open a restaurant, Ramsay is here to tell you that 65% of them close within 18 months. We join him at the start of the 22-week countdown to opening day. He talks about “the needle of fear” that pokes the whole time, reminding him he could lose all he has built. The good news is it gives him the motivation to move forward; the bad news is you could end up working for him and have a face like his executive chef being told that his canapés are too big.

Ramsay traces his tough love approach to his apprenticeship under Marco Pierre White, who once made Ramsay pay for all the ravioli in one service because he made the pasta a smidgen too thick.

We’re not told if he employs tough love at home. At least half of the time, we see Gordon hanging out with his wife Tana and his six kids, ranging from an 18 month old to 22 year old to. They obviously like him and miss him when he’s away. One of the most revealing scenes is where Gordon is leaving his posh London home for a trip abroad, where he talks about not telling his son that he’ll be away for four weeks, because the boy will ask him how many sleeps is that, which would be too tough. Which begs the question — why do it?

If you have the readies to open a 22 million pound restaurant at the age of 57, then surely you could also stop and spend time with the family. You get the sense it wouldn’t work, that he’d end up finding fault with them, one by one. This is good telly, I’d give it a watch. But I’m glad that someone else gets to be Gordon Ramsay.