Aw, well I liked it!

I was only half watching, but I liked what I saw.

It has potential at least. The sous chef, who I felt sorry for, and the apprentice could be good.

I liked Dobby.

Slow, but US shows are not much better right now. Anyway, who was the artist performing the closing credit music? Sounded like Coldplay, only better. Cheers!

I enjoyed it, will be watching the rest of the series.

That gave me a good few hearty laughs, but I agree with Nil that some parts were a little duller. Interesting change of pace from the pilot, I assume stretching some of its plot points out across the series rather than all into the one episode - not sure that some of the changes worked for the best (the aforementioned speed/laugh count for example), but it wasn't a total let-down.

Oh Christ... Oh my flipping Lord... Where do you even start with this one? Just five minutes in I had already developed a nervous tic brought on by the stress of anticipating the next dreadful set-up and excruciating punchline.

I attempted to concentrate on watching Alan Davies trying to act - the morbid fascination this provides can usually entirely distract one from the script - but was dragged back, kicking and screaming, to the comedy-by-numbers dialogue.

Always a bad sign when not even the actors appear to comprehend where the laughs are meant to be. You can spend as much money as you want - shoot as many miles of film stock as you like, use as many decent actors as you can book - on this stuff; if the script is as poor as this (unfortunately) was, it won't make any difference. The level of cool the production seemed to be trying to go for was also deeply irritating. It was dutifully ticking all the boxes associated with edgy, modern sitcom - single camera, filmic shooting, a hip soundtrack etc - without seeming to have first sat down and worked out what the show was about, or why anyone might care. The phrase "style over substance" seems insufficiently negative.

Recipe for this: prepare your base using snippets of expositionary dialogue, onto which spread a thick layer of contrivance - and sprinkle liberally with "surreal" unpalatable one-liners & desperate wordplay. Cock for 30 minutes.

Maybe another reason this isn't really for me is that, beyond wanting them to cook my dinner, I really couldn't give a f**k about the lives and loves of restauranting folk.

The Lenny Henry-fronted sitcom Chef! may not have been a comedy masterpiece, but it was vastly better than this. No doubt Whites will find some fans/defenders here and there: but this is an immense (if somewhat understandable) failure when compared to the high standards of other recent BBC Two offerings, i.e. Rev and Roger & Val Have Just Got In. (Both of which were aired during the graveyard summer shift - whilst this leads an autumn/winter schedule.) Of course not everything can be great. Of course not everything works as well on screen as it's hoped it might. Of course no-one actively sets out to make a bad show (disregard Justin Lee Collins for the purpose of this argument)... but this was really poor stuff for BBC Two.

Of course, it might be a "grower"...

(Classic get-out clause, Walker, well done you.)

Quote: Matthew Stott @ September 28 2010, 10:16 PM BST

I was only half watching

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Your bottom half?

Quote: Will Cam @ September 24 2010, 10:10 PM BST

Doesn't Alan Davies play Alan Davies in everything?

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This time he's playing Alan Davies with a moustache and goatee combo!

We liked the subtleness and weirdness. Regarding Alan Davies playing himself, oh well.... we think he is playing good character for the show, and we like the other characters too. Let's say that it's early days, and we would like to watch more episodes before making our mind about Whites...
Having said that, we were blown away by The Inbetweeners (first episode, new series)