Cooking up a Storm in a Teacup

The Masterchef finale is the talk of the town today as the popular program attracted 3.7 million viewers last night in the official ratings results. I'm not sure that it was entirely a shock to anyone, after all, it's been one of the most popular shows on TV since about week 4 of the series. Not to mention the fact that the weekly evictions have made the front page of most papers on a regular basis.

Besides, look at its esteemed colleagues in the three-point-something million club; two Australian Idol finales and The Block finale. The only other programs that get a look in are sports events. Mind you, I'm not about to go on an elitist rant about how Australian viewers should be more discerning in their program choices ... because I too watched the Masterchef finale (whilst multi-tasking several other activities - after all, I can't devote a whole 2 hours to one program!)

I came in at the end, to what I thought was the video of the speeches at my cousin's 21st - it was very friendly wasn't it? Judge Gary Mehigan fighting back proud tears was almost too much to bear. Some critics have suggested that in these "times of financial instability" family viewing is on the up and up - Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation being a prime (time) example. And who better to personify the image of homeliness and comfort than the chubby home-cooking specialist Julie?

It is certainly a much better program than the other reality drawl - Dancing with the Stars and Australia's Got Talent; where the stars aren't even B grade anymore and the only talent is the production team that manage to edit this crap into an hour around all the replays, recaps and suspenseful commercial break outro banter.

Channel 10 execs will be hoping the 7pm Project (starting tonight at, you guessed it, 7pm) can ride the wave of Masterchef's success, with winner Julie being a guest on tonight's debut show. And of course Australian Idol will be back on our screens next month.

Meanwhile, it looks like the finale show next year will be live to air after all the trauma the pre-record has caused the media ... particularly the Daily Telegraph. Check out Andrew Dodd's post on Crikey here.

One more thing ...

Prediction: there's going to be a celebrity version of Masterchef taping from September - If I were a betting gal (which I certainly am not) I'd put money on Vince Colosimo (even though he's currently contracted to channel 9) and maybe Pete Hellier being involved.