I like the recipe shows (Paula Deen, Michelle D'Arabian), the science side of things (Alton Brown), and the televised chaos of Iron Chef America. I also like Chopped and Top Chef.
I watch Hell's Kitchen too, to watch the drama and the kitchen time. At least the time in the kitchen doesn't make it all look like a life of glam. It's no secret that that they "stack the deck" just like shows like Big Brother, Survivor, etc.
If there were a "true" reality show about life in the kitchen, no one would want to watch it. Chances are, the few who did watch it would never eat at the restaurant ever again. The editing would cut out the boring parts, leaving only the great successes, huge failures, and stupid actions (a la the 3 second rule).
Think of everything you do as part of your day at work. Out of an 8 hour shift, how many minutes (probably more in the seconds range) do you think would survive the editing room?
Here's an example from me. I do telephone tech support for IT professionals. I hit a major home run today. The entire call took under 5 mins. This was a "pat yourself on the back" call. I mean, I rocked it. Of that call, 30 seconds might survive editing. Otherwise, while I had some good calls today and helped people and did what I consider to be a very good job, nothing else was tv-worthy. The 30 seconds that MIGHT have been tv-worthy are only of interest to other IT geeks. In the average 40-hour week (yeah, sorry about that), you might cobble together 1 minute on average of "usable" footage. More times than not, it's the caller doing something less-than-brilliant. This is not to say I don't have great days and even sometimes great weeks, where I truly felt like I've made a big difference, but for the most part, what I do is boring and mundane to even IT geeks. Even the part that IT geeks might determine to be "worthy" of watching, the rest of the world wouldn't care. Cooking is unfortunately the same way. No one wants to watch someone washing dishes for 2 hours.
