Cooking with Paris: What the Must Watch reviewers think

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell share their thoughts on Cooking with Paris on Netflix.

TV personality Paris Hilton is joined by celebrity friends to navigate new ingredients, new recipes and exotic kitchen appliances.

Hayley says: "It’s not even funny in an ironic way"

"Not that I care about Paris Hilton or what she does with her life, but I was kind of disappointed by this. Last year she gave an interview to the New York Times where she was talking about her whole persona - the baby voice, acting deliberately stupid, being this cartoon blonde bimbo. She was talking about how she made it all up, that it wasn’t her and she was doing it as a joke. She said she was ready to be herself now and ready to do something better. I read that and I thought ‘Interesting, I wonder what she’ll do next.’ And then she did this.

"This show feels like something from The Simple Life, something that we’ve seen before. In that interview, she was claiming to be better than that. I get that it's a joke. It’s just I think that it’s a tired one. Lady, you are forty years old. Do something else with your life. We don't need more shows where we have a famous person who's famous just for being famous doing something they suck at. It’s not even funny in an ironic way. It’s just bad."

Scott says: “A warts-and-all type cooking show”

"I echo what Hayley says here. You can’t tell whether she is in on the joke or not. A lot of the time you’re laughing at Paris’ lack of cooking knowledge or at things going wrong in the kitchen. In the viral video that inspired this Netflix series, Paris used a large stainless steel barbecue spatula to turn meat in a frying pan. She was also wearing biking gloves as cooking attire.

"Yet, I do admire the fact that it is a bit of a warts-and-all type cooking show. So many cooking shows on television are too aspirational, with the standards of hosting you are supposed to attaining to or the complicated meals you are supposed to cook. So much so that you end up feeling bad about your own dinner you’re eating whilst watching.

"So surprisingly there’s something comforting in seeing things go wrong. I love that Paris embraces the failures in cooking and sees it as part of life. It feels rather human.

"I also like the random glimpses of parts of her life that we don't ever see with other celebrities, for example, we see Paris’ Chief of Staff - a job title I assumed was only ever given to President and their partners.

"It’s not a Must Watch because, at the end of the day I just don’t think this show is good enough, but if you are in the need for a late night silly show (especially after a glass of red wine) this might be worth a look."

Cooking with Paris is available now on Netflix.

Must Watch is released as a podcast every Monday evening from BBC Sounds and all other good podcast providers.

This week, the team hear from Niamh Algar about Deceit on Channel 4. Plus, the team review The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family.

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