Gordon Ramsay walks into HMP Brixton in December 2011 with a simple brief: teach twelve prisoners to cook well enough that the public will pay for their food. Over four hour-long episodes the chef, used to Michelin-starred brigades, negotiates lockdowns, shakedowns and the abrupt departure of five of his original trainees. The survivors become Bad Boys’ Bakery, producing a lemon treacle slice that Caffè Nero agrees to trial in eleven south-London branches; by 2017 the bars are stocked in fifteen stores with plans for 190.
Recruits are chosen from A and G wings: Anthony Kelly, serving thirty months for burglary and dangerous driving, and Andrew Insley, twenty months for burglary, both make it through the course and leave prison with kitchen jobs waiting. Others do not last. Jerome Samuels is removed after verbally abusing a female officer; Rene Smith and Lawrence Gibbons are asked to leave following a punch-up with each other and with Ramsay’s assistant, Gee Charman. Tesfa Jones and Paul Wyatt secure try-outs at Ramsay’s Savoy restaurant; Jones keeps his place, Wyatt loses his after a drug relapse.
The series, produced by One Potato Two Potato for Channel 4, averaged 2.6 million viewers across its four-week run starting 26 June 2012. Ramsay’s wife insisted he take self-defence classes after on-set scuffles broke out, and Fox later declined an American version, telling the chef they already had “a lot of Gordon on the air.”
Production Details
Channel 4 / 1 Season / 4 Episodes / 2012
Showrunner(s): Sue Murphy, Tim Whitwell
Producer(s): Vari Innes, Jaemie Gallie
Music: Mat Davidson
Main Cast
Gordon Ramsay as Self - Presenter
