Eat this up

Confession: I don't like to cook. But I did like Iron Chef, more for the goofy Japanese fake-mythology than the actual culinary art. GSN has decided to try a down-home version of those cooking battles in Beat the Chefs.

Hollywood Junket got a reporter into one of the show's tapings, who proceeded to give the project a rave review. "Beat the Chefs is a guaranteed winning show that I predict will be perhaps the network’s most successful show yet! And I mean extremely successful." Um, okay. GSN's audience has usually not received offbeat shows too kindly over the years.

The premise for the cook-off is simple. Amateur chefs in a homey kitchen try to whip up better food than professional chefs Jeff Henderson, Antonia Lofaso and Beau MacMillian, who work in a state-of-the-art restaurant setup.

As with Iron Chef, the judges decide the winners with a taste test at the end of the show. The two permanent judges are food experts (so I'm told) Brad A. Johnson and Christy Jordan. Each week also brings an amateur judge, like reality starlet Melissa Rycroft. The host is Matt Rogers of American Idol notoriety.

This is a risk for GSN, no doubt. We're not talking about a quizzer or word game here. Will GSN's viewers decide this project belongs on Food Network? We'll start getting the answer on August 23.

UPDATE: GSN has sent out the pdf schedules for the weeks of August 20-26 and August 27-September 2. You can check them in the sidebar. American Bible Challenge and Beat the Chefs get lots of repeats besides their first-runs on Thursday night, as you might expect. The repeats even show up in prime time on Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I've seen this movie before with short-run GSN originals, and it generally doesn't work out well.

Other changes: Deal or No Deal disappears completely - it once dominated the network - and 5th Grader and Whammy get some new slots.