And for dessert ... more Gordon Ramsay. Photograph: Brad Barket/Getty
There's been a bit of a kerfuffle on the vocal Digital Spy forums and Channel 4's own forums about how an episode of the current series of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares was a "revisit" - in other words, a repeat with a few new minutes going back to the culinary hellhole in question to see how they're getting on tacked on the end.
The only surprise is that the posters on the forums have not complained about it before. This "revised repeat" format is common all over British TV, though Channel 4 is particularly fond of it.
The broadcasters argue that viewers like being updated on the stories they've been told. I think that's partly true - after all, I'm really enjoying catching up with the Doctors to Be. However, the way Channel 4 is revisiting Ramsay's victims/subjects is, to say the least, disingenous. First, the revisits have been slipped into the run of new programmes, meaning that viewers, not unreasonably, have switched on expecting, well, a new programme. If you're led to believe that the channel is airing a new series, you're entitled to expect fresh material.
Instead, the broadcaster is padding out its new episodes with repeats. You couldn't do that with a drama - can you imagine the fuss if, say, EastEnders boasted of having four episodes a week, one of which dated from five years ago? I'd be on the phone to Trading Standards. I'm sure it helps the schedulers at the channel - we're running into the season of mega-movies and tinsel-draped specials and it does make life easier if lots of autumn-season series come to an end at the same time.
But it short-changes the viewer. And this is a particularly crass way of doing it: you can do it better. Property Ladder last week had a new episode that followed two amateur developers and in the final segment, Sarah Beeny revisited one of them, a bloke who had learned her lessons and had done rather well out of his second and third developments. If you make the revisit part of the new material, it has merit and is indeed interesting.
Or you can simply chuck the programmes into the grab-bag that is More 4, E4 and E4 + 1, which is what's happened to Grand Designs. Nobody cares that they're revised repeats there; it's what we expect from those channels.
Above all, though, Channel 4 should be upfront about what it's doing. Annoy the viewers and they'll go somewhere else.
