Chef extraordinaire Alton Brown has been a fixture in the food entertainment biz since way back in 1999, when Good Eats premiered on Food Network. Good Eats ran for 14 seasons and helped launch several other gigs for Brown, including Iron Chef America and Cutthroat Kitchen. Now, Brown is getting back to his Good Eats roots with a sequel of sorts that is currently in the works for 2017. The series will appropriately be called A Cooking Show and its episodes will be released online. Alton Brown has explained why he's bringing the Good Eats premise to the internet, saying this:
I want freedom. I want freedom to do what I want and say what I want and work with the food that I want without being concerned about what a larger corporate entity might or might not want from that. I want to be able to respond to you guys.
Alton Brown had previously shared a short video to tease that he had a Good Eats-type show in the works for online distribution, but he kept pretty mum on what viewers could expect. He finally revealed the name of the show and the explanation for why he chose the internet in a new video on his Facebook page. All in all, I'd say that creative freedom is a solid reason for going with an online series rather than anything produced for cable.
A Cooking Show won't be released until some point in 2017, but Alton Brown dropped a few delectable hints about what we can expect. He plans on covering dishes that Food Network wouldn't allow on Good Eats, including rabbit, chicken gizzards, and liver and sweet breads. He also took suggestions from commenters who were watching his video live about what they would like to see, and judging from some of those notes, we may be able to count on episodes featuring non-beef steaks, venison, and yeast breads. Brown did confirm that the Good Eats yeast puppets will turn up, so he'll have some zany company in front of the camera.
Food Network has been good to Alton Brown over the years, and he certainly never would have gained his current fame if not for being showcased on the channel. Still, it's hard to blame him for feeling the urge to branch out with his new show. He's an expert in the field of cooking; it makes sense that he wants to introduce viewers to more than what Food Network will approve for the airwaves. He's taking a break from Cutthroat Kitchen to launch A Cooking Show, but he'll almost certainly be back for more of the hit Food Network show.
Check out our midseason TV premiere schedule to see what you'll be able to watch in the not-too-distant future to pass the time until Alton Brown officially launches A Cooking Show online. For a fix of Alton Brown until then, you can check out episodes of both Good Eats and Cutthroat Kitchen streaming on Netflix, along with a vast library of other shows worth watching.
