After the beginnings of a seemingly promising career, Roland White is executive chef at the White House hotel and well past his prime. He deals with his stuttered career by leaving much of the day to day difficulties of running the restaurant to his best friend and sous-chef Bib and his restaurant manager Caroline. They try to cope with an incompetent waitress Kiki, ambitious apprentice chef Skoose and the mercurial hotel owner Celia.
Production
Co-writer Matt King used his experiences working in restaurants to form the basis for Whites. "Whites is totally based on Hanbury Manor, where I worked. It’s a facsimile. Roland is a composite of several chefs I know who can’t be bothered any more. They’ve kind of missed the boat, missed out on Michelin stars and cruise along." King and Oliver Lansley tried to follow the lead of shows like Entourage and 30 Rock in writing Whites. In order to prepare for their roles, the cast trained under the chefs at Jamie Oliver's restaurant Fifteen. For her role as Kiki, Isy Suttie learned to play the trumpet. Speaking on his Twitter feed on 1 March 2011, Alan Davies confirmed that Whites would not be returning for a second series. The BBC had elected to cancel the series as it cost £3 million for one series. Fans launched an unsuccessful "Bring Back Whites" campaign in response to the show's cancellation. Davies later complained to The Daily Telegraph that he "got an email from someone I’d never met" informing him of the decision to cancel the show.
Reviews of the series have been mixed to positive. Dan Owen of the website Obsessed With Film gave the series three of four stars, claiming, "The great pleasure of Whites is that it has detail and reality to it. The production's slick and assured, while the ensemble of actors are perfectly cast." The Guardian also wrote a generally positive review, stating the show is "gentle, subtly played, often funny and quite promising." Metro UK wrote the show didn't entertain as well as Gordon Ramsay, saying "The problem with doing a comedy about chefs and restaurants is that the real thing does it so much better." Whites had 2.37 million viewers for its debut episode on 28 September 2010. The finale, which aired on 2 November 2010, attracted 1.58 million viewers. Since the ratings were above average, The British Comedy Guide speculated that "the show is a casualty of the BBC Comedy department having to make spending cuts".
Theme music
The opening and closing music is "Song for the Dead" by Alexander Wolfe.
U.S. adaptation
In October 2018, it was announced that Matt Tarses and Will Arnett were developing a new Whites series for NBC, based on the UK format, through Sony Pictures Television. Tarses will write the potential series and executive produce alongside Arnett, Marc Forman, Peter Principato, and the original series' creators Oliver Lansley and Matt King.
