My Kitchen Rules: The ultimate dinner party

Majella Hay of Australia’s Seven Network on achieving the right mix of cooking and contestants.

The people behind today’s biggest shows – in conversation with C21’s Mark Rowland

My Kitchen Rules is an Australian phenomenon. Yes, it’s a cooking competition, but it’s also very much a people show that spans the country, featuring likely and unlikely pairs of contestants who are not only good in the kitchen but fancy having all the other competitors round for dinner to pass judgement.

And that’s just the starter, because it morphs into a studio cook-off, then gets back on the road for one last course before the grand final. Majella Hay has been responsible both for producing it and now for commissioning it at Seven.
Here’s just the start of what we talked about:

The Instant Restaurants are quite some shoot: a 12- to 14-hour day in someone’s own kitchen, three courses for a dozen people – with the crew watching from a borrowed bedroom.

The best teams aren’t always in the opening line-up. Majella holds some back as ‘gatecrashers,’ which she admits “goes against all your instincts as a producer.”

After the pandemic, the show tried a gentler, everyone’s-a-winner tone. Majella explains why it went back to “a bit more spiciness” – because “we’re making a reality show, not a cooking show.”

Next Thursday: Race Across the World – how one of the most logistically challenging unscripted shows actually gets made.