At the beginning of every episode of her new cooking show Cooking with Paris, queen of the debs Paris Hilton tells viewers that she is “not a trained chef and doesn’t really know how to cook”. As self-evident public information announcements go, that one’s up there with Do Not Iron Clothes on Body.
No more than a few minutes in, as Hilton asks Kim Kardashian, “What’s a tong?” it is readily apparent that Cooking with Paris, a six-part Netflix series, is not meant to teach you how to cook. So what is it for? More pertinently, what is Hilton for? She made her name on The Simple Life, being an heir-head opposite Nicole Ritchie and inadvertently inventing a whole genre of reality TV. Fans say it wasn’t inadvertent – that Hilton has a genius for working the camera, creating entertainment from empty space, fame and celebrity from a handful of dust.
On that basis perhaps we’re meant to find Cooking with Paris funny. Yet ditzy old Paris – she’s 40 now – is so obviously a persona adopted for the camera that it isn’t funny. And if it isn’t a front – if she really doesn’t know what chives look like, or is genuinely surprised that heating food turns it brown – then that’s not really funny either. It’s actually rather sad.
Cooking with Paris evolved from a YouTube video in which Paris Hilton made a lasagne. It shows – like so much YouTube content this show has all the depth and subtlety of a hernia. The recipe is as follows:
1. Invite famous guest round for breakfast/lunch/dinner
2. Attempt to cook two or three dishes that wouldn’t trouble a four-year-old in a Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn play kitchen.
3. Fail.
4. Say “Sliving” and “Beyond” a lot, in the hope of establishing a catchphrase because “That’s Hot” kind of worked 20 years ago.
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