What time is Gordon Ramsay on Cocaine on TV?

What is the show about?

Britain is the biggest user of cocaine in Europe - and it's rife in the restaurant trade. Gordon Ramsay has seen the drug wreck the careers of colleagues, including a protege who lost his life to an overdose in 2003.

He now presents this two-part documentary exposing the truth about the drug. He travels to South and Central America to witness the illegal process by which cocaine is made, joins British police trying to catch drivers under the influence and sees the arrest of couriers on their way to a major deal.

What can I expect?

The title conjures unwelcome images but don’t expect a more-than-usually animated Ramsay here. He’s on the warpath hoping to deglamorise a drug he says is spiralling out of control in the UK – we now consume more than anywhere else in Europe.

By way of illustration, Ramsay joins a policeman in Bournemouth as he stops suspicious cars one midweek afternoon – and collars two drivers in quick succession, both of whom are on the school run and both of whom test positive for cocaine. Ramsay also finds widespread traces of the drug in the toilets of his own restaurants.

At the other end of the supply chain he goes deep into the Colombian rainforest to watch a coca farmer use cement powder, petrol and battery acid to cook his cocaine, earning him £30 a week. It’s a hard-hitting portrait of the background to an epidemic. “Nobody wants to talk about it,” he argues, “but they all want to f---ing snort it.”

Review by David Butcher