Little windows into hidden worlds.

Top Chef
America’s Next Top Model
Project Runway

These three show are vastly entertaining and offer great insights into their milieux. They’re chock full of stuff I don’t know a lot about.

Top Chef shows aspiring chefs building meals out of foods and combinations of foods I could never have imagined. They use techniques which boggle the mind. What they come up with, under less than optimal circumstances is often nothing short of miraculous.

Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model revolve around the fashion industry. I like Project Runway’s Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn, and most of the judges. They’re a big part of the show so that’s lucky. I know a bit about clothing construction and fabric. So I appreciate the contestants’ efforts as I have an inkling of what their doing. Certainly more so than with Top Chef. Project Runway and Top Chef both show professionals using their respective canvases to create.

In America’s Next Top Model the contestants are the canvas. Watching their evolution is part of the appeal.

I find three things really compelling in this show:
The art of high style commercial photography
How the models pose and interact with their environments
and, How the original image transfers to it’s final product-runway walk, photos, commercials.

Each show is a window into its industry and the individuals' creativity. Ignore all the scripted interpersonal drama and there’s a lot to be learned.

You’ll never look at a restaurant meal in the same way, a billboard with the same equanimity or a finely tailored suit with the same complacency. These shows offer what college classes and books can’t-a peak inside the inner workings of worlds most of us can barely imagine.