Are there any more celebrity culinary shows that we need?

Are there any more celebrity culinary shows that we need?

Paris Hilton's Netflix series, in which she semi-cooks semi-dishes, is the latest example of celebrities spending more time in the kitchen.

Nobody is going to watch Cooking With Paris to improve their culinary abilities, to say the obvious. The new Netflix series builds on last year's strange, almost Lynchian YouTube video in which Paris Hilton prepared an anti-lasagne and stretched it out to excruciating lengths. Hilton attempts to prepare marshmallows for Kim Kardashian in episode one and growls with disdain when they ruin her lace gloves. Hilton takes a break from preparing confetti flan in episode two to pose in the photo booth she set up in her living room. You're braver than me if you stick around long enough to see what happens in episode three.

Cooking With Paris has a strange retro flavor about it. The YouTube video This Is Paris, which premiered in September, tried hard to create a clear separation between Hilton's public character and the woman she is now, a middle-aged businesswoman wounded by years of suffering. Cooking With Paris, on the other hand, is a forceful smash back into her Simple Life days of intentional ignorance. It appears to be a squandered chance. It's a waste of calories. It'll most likely be huge.

But, even if it isn't, it doesn't have a particularly high hurdle to overcome. Cooking With Paris is the newest celebrity cooking show on the air. As we'll see, it's not a genre with a very high success rate. Here are some of Paris Hilton's new friends.

James May: Oh Cook

A show in which the most tolerable character from The Grand Tour, a man who can't cook, creates a television series about learning to cook. On paper, this is the worst idea anyone has ever had, yet two factors account for its success. The first is James May's innate curiosity – his ostensibly serious quest for self-improvement frequently triumphs over the hacky concept of a man being rubbish in a kitchen – and the second is your father's eagerness to watch anything remotely related to Top Gear.

Selena Gomez: Selena + Chef

Another show in which a famous chef who isn't particularly good learns to cook. Selena Gomez, this time, took it upon herself to persuade some of the world's top chefs to instruct her over Zoom during Covid. Which, obviously, smacks of entitlement - I'm not great at constructing concert venues, but you won't get me bugging Frank Gehry for a FaceTime – but Gomez is just about committed and infectious enough to pull it off. It's also a hit; a third season has recently been commissioned.

Snoop Dogg: Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party

In which Snoop Dogg linked up with Martha Stewart, the culinary empress, for either a cooking show or a competition to see who could appear the most uncomfortable. Potluck Dinner Party was a refreshingly old-fashioned culinary program that was shot on stage in front of a live audience. However, there was a DJ, and in one episode, Snoop and Martha came out of a cake, and the show couldn't determine if Snoop should be more professional or Martha should twerk. This program does have an odd sweetness to it, however, it isn't sweet enough to make it fully enjoyable.

Amy Schumer: Amy Schumer Learns to Cook

What's more, guess what? Amy Schumer is a terrible chef! What's more, guess what? Amy Schumer is learning how to cook in this episode. What's more, guess what? This sort of television show has probably been done to death by now. Even so, this one makes an effort to keep it in the family. Chris Fischer, who trained under Mario Batali and worked as a chef at The River Cafe, is Schumer's cooking instructor. He's an expert in his field. Would this program have been more instructive if everyone had simply let Fischer do his thing? Most likely, but that isn't how things are done around here anymore.

Tiffani Thiessen: Dinner at Tiffani’s

Tiffani Thiessen, according to Kelly Kapowski of Saved by the Bell, "essentially created Paris Hilton." So it came as a pleasant surprise to learn in 2015 that she is also a capable cook. Thiessen had a dinner party for her famous pals, including Mario Lopez, Jason Priestley, and Nathan Fillion, in Dinner at Tiffani's. She was also a welcoming, engaging, and pleasant host. Because she was dressed too impractically to create marshmallows, she didn't have to learn anything, mess up anything, or make frustrated little expressions. It was a perfectly acceptable culinary show, but it was tedious to watch as such.