By Mark HadleyFriday 30 Apr 2010TV and StreamingReading Time: 3 minutes
Master Chef
RATING: PG
DISTRIBUTOR: Network Ten
RELEASE DATE: Nightly, 7:30 pm
The Australian consumption of food preparation programs continues with the return of the second series of Master Chef. Last year Network Ten reaped a ratings bonanza when this latest permutation of reality television hit the small screen. The second series includes much of the attraction of the first, combining keen amateur cooks pursuing the dream of a lifetime with encouraging executive chefs as mentors and presenters.
This continues to be the real distinguishing factor from the crop of competitive cooking programs: judges who actually who are more concerned with the progress of their charges, than breaking them with unbelievably high expectations.
Some of Ten’s thunder was stolen by the disturbingly similar My Restaurant Rules but this remains the deciding factor. Bring on the encouraging television say I! Do we change people by intimidation or do we offer service and sympathy?
If Jesus was executive producer he’d be working on Master Chef. He didn’t demand, he walked a mile in our shoes and offers to take us where we need to go even now.
Hey Hey It’s Saturday
RATING: PG
DISTRIBUTOR: Channel Nine
RELEASE DATE: Wednesday, 7:30 PM
I’m not sure what got Hey Hey It’s Saturday back on air but I’m sure it involved a fair bit of nostalgia. Not nostalgic viewers, mind you. Most have little memory of this icon beyond the abortive pilot that aired in 2009, whose sole claim to fame was making Australians look like they were completely unaware of the racial tensions associated with black-face performances.
No, I think Hey Hey’s return to a regular time-slot had more to do with the nostalgia Channel Nine feels for its own glory days and the hope that the return of the disturbingly ageless Daryl Somers would somehow revitalize them.
Sadly the new series is little better than last year’s reunion special. The producer’s seem to have forgotten that Hey Hey already took a run at an adult, night-time audience more than two decades ago and it didn’t work then either.
The return of Ozzie Ostrich, Dickie Knee and Plucka Duck is enough to make you cry if Daryl’s blatant promotion of sponsors and other Nine programs hasn’t already brought you to tears. Any program that makes locker-room sexual innuendo the highest form of wit deserves to fail, and the sooner the better. But then the Footy Show had years in the sun, which just goes to show that television producers will never go broke underestimating an Australian audience.
Sea Patrol
RATING: M
DISTRIBUTOR: Channel Nine
RELEASE DATE: Thursdays, 8:30 PM
Last night I had my first dose of Flashpoint, that American series about super-charged SWAT team members who all look like they’ve just stepped out of a salon … no wait. Nine dumped that series a few months back. I must have been watching the return of Sea Patrol.
Call me a cynic but I think that crisp combat suits and perfect hair don’t convey much of the reality of life aboard a patrol boat on Australia’s far north-eastern borders. I have had the privilege of serving alongside of Australian service men and women and frankly I think they would be stunned at the way Sea Patrol’s officers and enlisted personnel kid, criticise and threaten each other without any seeming consequences.
But this playing down of the authority angle might have much to do with the need to recruit service-wary young Australians. HMAS Hammersley is a far more attractive prospect, a cross between the Batmobile and the Love Boat.
What is missing is the respect, the commitment to often mind-numbing but necessary tasks, and above all the really hard work. We do prospective sailors no favours painting this sort of picture with dramatic rescues around every headland and terrorists popping out of the water.
Sea Patrol does even less for the average viewer. Sure it’s a whimsical watch, but are our defenders only worthy of respect when they’re leaping into the jaws of death?