The competition in this year’s MasterChef Australia is certainly heating up as the season is close to naming its Top 10 contestants. However, now that enough time has passed and challenges have been completed, long-time fans of the show have expressed one major complaint.
While the show has incorporated the show’s fundamental elements, like pressure tests, immunity challenges, and Mystery boxes, fans want more of the elements beloved from previous seasons, like “off-site or location cooks”, invention tests, or more “service challenges.”
“I’ve loved MasterChef Australia for many years, but it just feels really boring this year,” one viewer expressed online. “I understand budget cuts, but I wish some of the older challenges would at least come back. The Pressure Tests and Invention Tests were my favourite, or the ones where they’re limited to a set of ingredients, no pantry, no garden.”
“I miss the cooks actually being forced to be creative.”
Cost-cutting has been cited as the main reason this season has featured less variety, with the resting of I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! viewed as evidence of the network’s shrinking budgets.
“Their budgets are shrinking every year”
Despite still believing that the “production quality is top-notch as always” and expressing praise for the “incredibly strong cooks this year”, MasterChef Australia superfans have started conversations on Reddit threads and Facebook groups online about the details they’re missing most this year.
“I can’t stop noticing that this is the first season where they seem to have gotten rid of all the fun, classic elements we love,” one fan observed. “Has anyone else noticed how much is missing?”
“No Pressure Tests: We only had 1 or 2 right at the start of the season; Confined to the Studio: They haven’t gone out even once! No off-site or location cooks; Missing Classic Challenges: Where are the Invention Tests, Service Challenges, and proper Team Challenges?; Lack of Proper Guest Chefs.”
Other viewers noted the absence of long-format masterclasses.
The consensus is that budget cuts are to blame for the shift away from the format of old, with comments such as, “I think this season has been hit by significant budget cutbacks,” one fan offered. “Ch 10/Paramount have been bleeding money on declining revenues. For example, I’m A Celebrity… had been “rested” and the last season was mostly pre-recorded.”
“Looks like their budgets are shrinking every year,” another agreed. “Meanwhile, we’re stuck with ‘whatever you want to cook’ kinda challenges.”
“If they’re cutting costs, just have a quick trip to somewhere interstate,” another suggested. “Surely the judges have chef friends where they can still have off-site challenges.”
Channel 10’s defence of MasterChef format
When asked about these predicted “budget cuts”, a Channel 10 spokesperson explained what changes and “fan favourite formats” have made an appearance this year.
“MasterChef Australia has served up success again this year, with Season 18 reaching its biggest total national audience since 2022,” the spokesperson told WHO. “In addition to welcoming worldclass guest judges like Robert Irwin, Jimmy and Jane Barnes, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, this season of MasterChef brings back some fan favourite formats, including a return to Top 40 on-camera auditions, Invention Tests, and Beat The Chef.”
However, the spokesperson did add that “there are fewer team challenges this season, with four episodes per week.”
“The format is mostly as follows, but does vary across the season: Sunday nights are Mystery Box; Monday nights, elimination; Tuesday nights, Invention Test or Team Challenge; Wednesday nights, Pressure Test or Immunity,” they said. “As a result, there is less room for off-site challenges.”
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the sustained appetite for MasterChef Australia and its continually reinvigorated format.”
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