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Just as important, Runway isn't afraid to be fun. Like the couture world itself, it plays with the tension between high- and lowbrow, combining earnest discussions of artistic intent with shamelessly over-the-top challenges. In the first challenge of Season 3, the contestants "source" the materials for their first outfits from the apartments they're staying in--tearing down chandeliers and shearing the fabric off mattresses. And the contestants know that performance is part of their business. A contestant in the Season 3 premiere lays out her "four cs" theory of success: "courage, creativity, cash and celebrity."
Magical Elves took much the same approach to this spring's Top Chef. Fox's Hell's Kitchen (Mondays, 9 p.m. E.T.), on the other hand, is more about heat than flavor; lobster-faced British chef Gordon Ramsay puts a group of cooks through boot camp, overseeing them with such helpful advice as "Move your arse!" Compared with Top Chef, the show places less emphasis on menu planning and presentation than on the chaos of running a kitchen--especially with a half-crazed Brit chasing you.
Kitchen is not likely to draw in Thomas Keller fans, but a broadcast network has to program for an Olive Garden crowd. "We wanted to create a show that I could watch, and I'm not a foodie," says executive producer Arthur Smith. "It's like a live sporting event. It's hot, there's time pressure, there's someone yelling at you, and there are sharp things. There's danger." Still, hundreds of food professionals applied for the chance to become chef at a new restaurant--though they'll probably be glad to escape without a cleaver in the back.
On HGTV Design Star (Sundays, 9 p.m. E.T.; debuts July 23), celebrity is the prize: as on The Next Food Network Star, the winner gets to host a show on the channel. (Runway's winner gets, among other perks, $100,000 to start a business.) Otherwise, the show is basically Project Living Room--10 aspiring home designers try to please a troika of judges--with a focus on collaboration. In the first episode, the competitors work in teams to appoint the extremely narrow town house they're staying in. "Design is not all about your personal tastes," says HGTV programming vice president James Bolosh. "It's about melding them with the homeowner's." Or not, as when a zealous designer paints someone's treasured heirloom table in the show's second challenge. While it doesn't have Klum's star power, Design Star is sharp and addictive, with a memorable cast that includes a pair of ebullient twins, a loopy artist, a tense Janeane Garofalo look-alike and a 30-year-old single mom who, I'm certain, was chosen for her design talent and not because she was once Miss Utah U.S.A.