'Meet Britain's finest - and most temperamental - chef: Gareth Blackstock, owner of the prestigious restaurant Le Chateau Anglais. Impossibly difficult to work for, fastidious about his creations and prone to imaginative torrents of abuse, Gareth is prepared to let nothing, but nothing, interfere in his search for culinary perfection. And if others must suffer to meet that reasonable standard... well, just don't ask for salt! Tuck in for a gourmet blend of biting wit and kitchen chaos as Lenny Henry stars in all three series of the much-loved BBC comedy.'

'Long before Gordon Ramsay's TV tirades and Masterchef, Lenny Henry was wielding an iron ladle with the genre-defining "fly-on-the-wall" sitcom that is Chef! Now on DVD for the first time, tuch in for a gourmet blend of biting wit and kitchen chaos in all three series of the hit BBC comedy series.'

One of Britain's most popular comedians, Lenny Henry swapped his award-winning stand-up routine to create the definitive tyrannical chef on television. Henry starred as Gareth Blackstock, a talented, arrogant, tyrannical and obsessed chef who has endlessly inventive insults for his staff, unknowing customers, and almost anyone else he encounters. Chef Blackstock's traditional French cuisine with an eclectic flair is served at "Le Chateau Anglais," a gourmet restaurant in the English countryside that is one of the few in the United Kingdom to receive a two-star rating from Michelin. The chef's quest for perfection and his lack of awareness about the costs of that perfection mean that the restaurant is on the brink of financial collapse when he and his wife Janice (played by Caroline Lee-Johnson) buy it early in the first series. The establishment mostly remains on that brink, despite Janice's best efforts as manager, eventually coming under the control of the boorish Cyril Bryson (Dave Hill) in the final series.

Although focused on the restaurant's kitchen, the countryside (with its black market suppliers) and the Blackstocks' home life are also backdrops for the show; the chef's long hours mean that Janice is routinely neglected in the bedroom, and their plans for a family remain delayed.

I have to be honest with you here, what I was expecting from this widely-talked about series isn't exactly what I saw. It is a fact that Lenny Henry is a comic genius, easily one of the best in the business, and this show has some moments of hilarity on its own, but overall I didn't find it all that funny. Maybe it just wasn't the show that I would enjoy in the first place, after all it has been named one of the best UK comedy series of the 1990's. People who were apart of the original late night Channel 7 broadcast fanclub will be over the moon to see the series finally released on DVD after all these years. And for those who haven't seen it before, you may enjoy it or you may not...it's worth a try! Let us know what you think!

★★☆☆☆
Chef! - The Complete Collection can be purchased on DVD NOW!