TVB’s “Beautiful Cooking” Revival Earns Mixed Responses
TVB has officially brought back the popular cooking variety show Beautiful Cooking <美女廚房>, twelve years after its official premiere.
The all new third season, renamed Cooking Beauties, features an all-new MC team which includes Edwin Siu (蕭正楠), Bob Lam (林盛斌), and Owen Cheung (張振朗). The game’s format has also been slightly revamped—the new season includes a segment where celebrity judges are to guess the three celebrity contestants on the show.
The first episode features celebrity judges FAMA (農夫) and Tony Hung (洪永城), while celebrity contestants include Katy Kung (龔嘉欣), Jacqueline Wong (黃心穎), and Grace Chan (陳凱琳).
Cooking Beauties premiered on June 2 with mixed reviews. While some viewers found it entertaining, netizens criticized the MCs for having boring humor. At a promotional event for his new TVB drama Deep in the Realm of Conscience <宮心計2深宮計>, Edwin said, “I didn’t read any [online] comments, but while filming the first episode, we did notice that there were certain things that just can’t be compared with the classic. Thinking back to day one when the first season premiered, people had a lot to say about it too. We have reflected after the first episode and we know what we need to improve on. We’ve been observing and changing things up constantly. We hope we’ll be able to find more things to entertain the viewers. In the upcoming episode, we invited Raymond Cho (曹永廉) and that foul mouth Raymond Wong (黃浩然).”
As for his drama Deep in the Realm of Conscience, which has so far surpassed 660 million views online, Edwin said, “That’s amazing, but I am not sure what constitutes successful online viewership. However, if Flying Tiger <飛虎之潛行極戰> has managed to break 3 billion views, I am sure that our show has the ability to catch up to them.”
Edwin is happy to hear that Deep in the Realm of Conscience is getting good responses. “A lot of viewers have said that they think my character looks very cool, but that is really because of my outfit. (Raymond Cho said you looked flabby during that one shirtless bath scene.) He never has anything good to say about me because he needs to make himself feel better,” Edwin said with a laugh. “I know how he looks. Tell him to hit the gym some more. Maybe he’ll get the chance to be a siu sang.”
This article is written by Addy for JayneStars.com.
I love the brotherly ribbing between Edwin & Raymond!
But DITROC is moving really slow. I have to constantly skip around because their talk scenes take forever. And the constant need to rhyme really gets on my nerve after a while. Annie Liu is so adorable in here even with her accent. Jacqueline is doing OK too. But Nancy looks quite old with her make-up and the 4 department heads also look very old and haggard. Comparing to the first series, things are moving much slower. Nancy and Steven also don’t have much chemistry. Their scenes feel so forced… hmm. I hope it gets better.
Eeeehhh just watched this i like the original cast more Ronald Edmond and Alex Fong should come back and take over I’m not a fan of Edwiin
Just watch this episode yesterday. I’m impressed with Katy Kung. She’s the only cook who knows what she’s doing in both cooking session.
@kidd
Although Katy is cute and can cook, but it is questionable whether she can be regarded as a beauty which is the requirement to be a contestant in the show. The good thing about this show is that we got to know more about the personalities of the contestants of the show by the way they interact. Grace seemed to have the nicest personality by far….
@jimmyszeto
I think Katy is pretty enough for the show. I find her prettier than Jacqueline Wong.
Anyway ‘Beauty Cooking’ is just a name only. Any decent looking actress can participate. Season 2’s winner is Siu Yee, who is not considerate conventionally beautiful either.