: ABC is teaming with British chef Jamie Oliver and Ryan Seacrest for
a new unscripted series that gives healthy makeovers to an entire
city.
Oliver will travel to the unhealthiest places in America and find
ways to use nearby resources to improve local eating habits. The
network has ordered six hours of the project from Ryan Seacrest
Productions.
The series is loosely inspired on Oliver's acclaimed school lunch
project in the U.K., where the chef set about to improve kids'
nutrition. His effort to improve one school's offerings, documented
in the 2005 series "Jamie's School Dinners," shamed educators into
passing new measures to ban certain junk foods.
Seacrest said he talked about school lunches during a segment on
his KISS FM morning radio show and was struck by the amount of
listener response. Then he heard Oliver was looking to bring his
public service campaign stateside. The resulting ABC show will not
only tackle a city's schools, but workplaces and other avenues for
change.
"I couldn't do what I do in terms of my schedule if I didn't eat
right and exercise right," Seacrest said. "As a kid I was chubby,
and I'm a firm believer that the fuel we put into our body results
in a healthy lifestyle. Jamie's going to come over here, roll up
his sleeves and use the resources of each town to help condition
living habits to make it a better and healthier place."
Oliver previously appeared as a judge on ABC's successful one-off
series "Oprah's Big Give," where his personality impressed the
network. Though health and fitness reality genre (dominated by
NBC's "The Biggest Loser") has proved a tough nut for networks to
crack, ABC's co-head of alternative series Vicki Dummer points out
that Oliver benefits from having successful experience doing this
sort of program in the UK.
"Jamie has been through this mission before," she said. "He will be
an advocate for change, but not act like, 'I'm from Britain and you
Americans are fat.' I think he's really equipped to make a change
and knock on the right doors."
The target city hasn't yet been named, but it's expected to be a
place that has been cited on "fattest cities" lists. ABC expects to
air the as-yet-untitled show sometime next year.