When CNN launches its new streaming service as part of its All Access subscription tier on Tuesday, it will have a tasty surprise for fans of the late Anthony Bourdain.
CNN says that its new subscription offering will include Bourdain programming that has never been available to stream, until now.
The program is called Prime Cuts, and it served as a companion series to the flagship show Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Prime Cuts combined clips from the series with revealing interviews with Bourdain, who reminisced about the trips, people, food and cultures that he encountered, and gave a behind-the-scenes look at the show.
“These reflective, candid conversations reveal behind the scenes insights and Tony at his best — deeply honest about his travels, his work, and what the journey meant to him,” CNN says.
Prime Cuts episodes (an hour long, with commercials) ran on CNN ahead of each season premiere of Parts Unknown, serving as previews to get viewers hungry for the new episodes. But after airing on CNN (many of the episodes ran only once, more than a decade ago), they never ran again, and were not included in the streaming libraries available on CNN+ or CNN Max.
The new All Access tier will be the first time that the entire CNN Anthony Bourdain collection, including every episodes of Parts Unknown, Prime Cuts, and the 2021 film Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, will be available to stream.
More than seven years after his death at age 61, Bourdain remains a cultural force, and a powerful draw for CNN, which poached him from his previous perch at the Travel Channel in 2012. Bourdain and Parts Unknown effectively kickstarted CNN’s original series push, giving it instant credibility and gravitas.
At the show’s series premiere party in 2013 at Porter House in New York’s Time Warner Center, he expressed excitement to this reporter at the possibility of CNN’s resources getting him places he couldn’t access before, and trepidation in acknowledging that his show’s format was a departure from what CNN was known for.
Of course, the show was a hit, and became a staple of CNN’s programming lineup.
A former chef at the New York brasserie Les Halles (the steak frites was the best in town), Bourdain first became a national name with the publication of his 2000 book Kitchen Confidential, a no-holds-barred memoir of his life as a chef and cook. That book led to a number of shows, from A Cook’s Tour and No Reservations to The Layover and, ultimately, Parts Unknown.