TV mojo back
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday July 22, 2009
AT THE climax of the cultural tsunami known as MasterChef Australia, the victory of Everywoman, Julie Goodwin, the quintessential mother who loved "Aussie" cuisine, and who kept flirting with disaster but cooked like a master when it counted, was a victory for the ordinary becoming the exceptional. When the pressure was highest and the need greatest, she shone. Yet the close run from Poh Ling Yeow, drawing on the cuisine of her Malaysian-Chinese background, also showed the growing diversity of our tastes.What a pleasant sea change from the grungy, dog-eat-dog tension of so much reality television. There was no vicarious horror at people behaving badly, no crudity, no grotesquerie, no verbal knives, none of the gratuitous cruelty and assorted voyeurism that reality TV producers have used in the past to elicit ratings. We've moved on. Our lowest common denominator is not our highest television currency.Like other reality TV contests and talent quests, MasterChef did depend on the tension of elimination, but every contestant was treated with respect and encouraged to shine. If there was any back-biting, it was not shown. In Sunday's finale, everyone nailed it, not just the contrasting final two contestants, Goodwin and Yeow, but the whole production.Everyone watching at home has had their own kitchen meltdowns, and the show brought the drama of cooking fully alive on the big stage. And what a stage: 3.7 million people, the most to have ever watched a non-sporting program in Australian TV history. To reach an audience on this scale, every age group had to be engaged, and it was. It was followed by parents, children and grandparents. A whopping 80 per cent of 16- to 39-year-olds watching commercial free-to-air TV on Sunday tuned in to MasterChef. The show dominated every other age group.The series lifted aesthetic appreciation for what we often take for granted food and home cooking. At a time of economic anxiety when people are cooking and eating at home more often, MasterChef gave a positive jolt to the camaraderie of the dinner table and a well-prepared meal.Let's hope that this is the real zeitgeist of our post-global financial crisis times, where the talent quest is not to draw out the greatest show of vulgarity or excess, but to give a range of ordinary people the chance to have a go and entertain us all in the process.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald