The spring and summer schedule announced by Fox this afternoon reads like a TV British Invasion, with three Gordon Ramsay franchises returning to their traditional occupied territories beginning April 11 and the dating series I Wanna Marry “Harry” premiering May 27. Such moves can only be interpreted as a retaliation to BBC America’s brash Declaration of Comedic Independence—if the two networks were at all related, and not just having their programming decisions conflated in an effort to extend an already strained comic metaphor. But Kitchen Nightmares is about to seize the Friday-night timeslot of Enlisted, a sitcom about life in the U.S. Army, so why not indulge the make-’em-ups for just a little bit longer?
Yes, the news that goes unannounced within the press release from Fox involves Ramsay temporarily shouting Enlisted off of the network’s schedule, though that show’s creator Kevin Biegel has already taken to the incendiary, hand-distributed broadside of our day, Twitter, to assure a stunned populace that all is well. Fox reps tell The A.V. Club that Enlisted will return to the schedule, but they “just don’t have specifics yet.” The same reps are currently looking into the fate of Us And Them—until we hear further, it is now assumed that the Alexis Bledel-Jason Ritter sitcom has gone Benedict Arnold, reverting to its roots as the BBC’s Gavin & Stacey.
America’s military might and stars of beloved dramedies thusly scattered, U.K. TV forces can begin their campaign of psychological warfare, namely duping 12 single women into courting an average Englishman who they’re told is Harry, Prince of Wales. I Wanna Marry “Harry” hails from producer Ryan Seacrest—who knows a thing or two about being in the stranglehold of a British tyrant—and returns reality TV to the good, old, manipulative days of Joe Millionaire. Of course, any contestant who’s paying attention to geopolitical TV happenings would know that the true Prince Harry is busy colonizing the Antarctic with Jimmy McNulty and Eric Northman, as seen tonight on England’s other new television outpost, NBC.