In today's day and age, where reality television runs wild and creativity is rare, My Kitchen Rules is dominating the airwaves. It's the Seven Network's response to the overwhelming success of Network Ten's MasterChef Australia and a revision and extension upon My Restaurant Rules, another competitive Seven Network cooking show from the mid 2000s. The question, however, needs to be asked: does competitive food television have an expiry date?
Well, like all reality television series, food TV is dying. Whilst I prefer the premise of people cooking and utilising some talent of theirs on television, as opposed to getting frisky with housemates under the watchful eye of Big Brother, the days of competitive cooking, in small screen land, are coming to an end. The MasterChef series has worked and has, in some cases, inspired changes and improvements in the cooking habits of some households. Characterisation in such TV series, however, is never well developed.
Some might argue that characterisation is non-existent in such television; this is completely and utterly false. The use of melodrama is a key indicator that the show uses the trials and tribulations of its characters to trigger an emotional response in the audience. When MKR contestants break the fourth wall and speak to the audience, in present tense, about past events in the kitchen, it's hard to watch. How is it that people talk about what has happened, in current time, and expect audiences to understand it? The same feature has been used in spin-offs of the MasterChef series as well. Stations like Seven and Ten are better off hosting cooking shows with quirky chefs, as opposed to reality cooking television series with uninteresting, "diverse" personalities.
Look, I must preface my conclusion by saying that this brand of reality TV is a whole lot easier to consume than brands of reality TV from yesteryear. That being said, it's still far from good. Constructing reality and selling it as "reality" may engage simple minds, but it isn't good television. It's time for free-to-air television to serve up something more enticing to audiences, something more than competitive banter in the kitchen.
By Chris Traficante