Inside The Ritz Hotel: Flattery gets you everywhere in this choux-pastry puff of a documentary

A cameo from Anna Wintour lights up this new documentary
Lucy Pavia3 July 2019

Have we reached peak hotel documentary? I say this as someone genuinely entertained by previous fly-on-the-wall offerings inside the likes of Claridges and Cliveden House, where a wry, unflappable concierge caters to the whims of guests with just the tiniest hint of side-eye.

But there comes a point when even a winning TV formula starts to feel formulaic.

Unfortunately, that’s not the biggest problem with ITV’s Inside The Ritz Hotel. The premise of the show — “With people spending less and ever more luxury hotels opening their doors, how does one of the most traditional hotels in the world stand out from the rest?” — presents a potentially interesting question, a hotel equivalent of the excellent Liberty of London, perhaps, where a city grand dame is forced to move with the times.

But episode one doesn’t even attempt to answer this question. All hotel documentaries are selling a product but none does it quite as shamelessly as Inside The Ritz Hotel, a choux-pastry puff of a programme that feels like an extended version of those promotional screensaver films you sometimes find on your hotel-room TV.

Behind-the-scenes: The documentary introduces staff at the iconic hotel
ITV

Like previous hotel documentaries, we meet loyal members of Ritz staff: elegant head hall porter Michael de Cozar, who has worked at the hotel for 46 years and picks up the phone like it’s a piece of evidence in a crime scene; resident pianist Ian Gomez, who has put in more than two decades tinkling the ivories; and executive chef John Williams.

They’re all hard-working people who clearly love their jobs, but, unlike other hotel documentaries, we don’t get to see much of their day-to-day work wrangling demanding guests (always the most interesting part) because the programme keeps cutting to a selection of talking heads wheeled in to tell us why they love the Ritz so much.

These include Good Morning Britain hosts Kate Garraway and Richard Arnold, actor Christopher Biggins, Liverpool footballer Mo Salah and milliner Philip Treacy. Actor Richard E. Grant also pops in to bounce on a bed (guess what? He likes the bed) and Strictly dancers Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec visit for tea (guess what? They really enjoy the tea).

Famous fans: Anna Wintour is among the talking heads in this star-studded documentary
ITV

The voiceover doesn’t help: “With its pastel decor and soft, flattering lighting, the Palm Court was designed with women in mind”, we’re told, and at the Ritz “only French champagne will make the cut”. All champagne is French. What is this? A Ricky Martin song?

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The only light relief comes courtesy of Anna Wintour, who pops up to deliver the best back-handed compliment of 2019: “I don’t like a lot of stuff in a hotel room and [at the Ritz] they have a lot of pictures of the original founder and old movie stars. I used to spend a long time putting them into drawers so I didn’t have to look at them, but now they’re just gone.”

Wintour reviewing luxury hotels? Now that’s a show I want to watch.

Inside The Ritz Hotel airs at 8pm on ITV tonight.

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