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Gary Mehigan slams ‘copycat’ My Kitchen Rules

MasterChed judges contemplate changing their phrases after hearing them used too much by Seven's show.

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MasterChef Australia judge Gary Mehigan has slammed My Kitchen Rules as a copycat show.

“My Kitchen Rules is quite obviously a blatant rip-off and while it’s always nice to be emulated, in all honesty, I think they are doing very much what we do and I would like to see them be their own program,” he tells TV Week.

“MKR has really tried not to be too different,” he says.

“The set looks similar to ours and the phrases are the same. I ring Manu up every so often and tell him not to say ‘Your time is up, step away from your benches’ on his show because that’s ours!

“George and I have said to each other, ‘Ok, we can’t say that anymore, we’ve got to say something different.”

53 Responses

  1. It’s called small man syndrome Gary. you will always have a problem with anyone else doing well.

    Masterchef does not own the cooking show genre in the world of television.

    Masterchef Australia is Not original.

    They ripped off Top Chef and Hells Kitchen.

    Lemming audience are suckered in by the hype.

    Go MKR!

  2. Thank goodness MKR didn’t rip off the MC chefs. At least Manu and Pete aren’t hobbits….and get over it Gary, MC is a complete rip off of a number of shows anyway

  3. It is pathetic that they have a go at another cooking programme on a different channel.
    I like both programmes, but Gary is wrong when he say that, ‘step away from your benches’ is theirs… It is not, they took it from the British Masterchef which has been going for about 10 years, and is still showing on Foxtel. Junior Masterchef I did not like at all, and it’s made me a bit wary of watching MC when it returns.
    I agree Pete and Manu are better on the eyes…. They get my vote

  5. I thought i was the only one who had such a temper against MKR. It is an alright show i guess, but channel 7 don’t even try not to make it sus’ that they are trying to copy Masterchef

  7. At the end of the day, if Masterchef and My Kitchen Rules were placed in the same time slot, on the same night, Masterchef would wipe the floor with them. Better production, better pedigree, much more heart and soul on the plate.

  8. Hmmm what would he like Manu to say? “Shuffle away from your cooking work places please?” Too funny! I love Masterchef with a passion but I can even remember back at school our Head Home Science teacher saying those words when we were doing a food prep exams. Step Away from your benches and we would roll our eyes.
    Wow the world sure has become petty. Anyway each to their own, if he wants to claim it, its his time in the house 🙂 That is all….

  9. The total concept and aesthetic for MC was ripped off, borrow, and conceptualize by Top Chef! Years ago!

    MC needs to relax, and not think they invented the wheel.

  11. The total concept and aesthetic for MC was ripped off, borrowed, and conceptualized by Top Chef in the US! Years ago!

    MC needs to relax, and not think they invented the wheel.

  13. Oh please, just because it’s been branded as an adaptation of My Restaurant Rules doesn’t excuse it from being a copycat of Masterchef. If My Restaurant Rules was such a great show, why did they stop making it in 2005? Why bother changing it to My Kitchen Rules? Also, let’s not forget it was only relaunched after Masterchef proved to be a success.

    Gary may have put a little bit of emphasis on the phrases, which may sound a little petty to some, but he was absolutely spot on in saying that they are similar. The phrases are just one of many stylistic elements that they took from Masterchef including the music, the sets and they’ve even added Masterchef-style challenges this year (eg. cooking for the cast of Home and Away). Sure, MKR has a few points of difference but that’s only because they’re emulating Come Dine With Me (dinner parties) and The Amazing Race (teams) as well, which doesn’t make MKR any more original.

  15. I agree withGary completely – it’s branding. I’ve always been a firm MC fan but have been amazed at how likeable MKR has been. I enjoy it but don’t respect it as much as MC.

  16. There’s no doubt MKR had some very similar challenges to Masterchef this year. And it lacked in storytelling and giving us background on the contestants. But I think it showed a lot more of the skills of each competitor. Half of Masterchef’s challenges have got little to do with individual skill and creativity – they are just following a recipe! That’s how it is in something like the macaron challenge and that’s how it is when they go up against a chef to cook a signature dish. It’s more like a test of how well someone can follow a set of instructions!

    I think MC is still better but it could learn a few things from MKR too.

  17. I’m my opinion, I’m amazed MKR works, basically down to not understanding what Manu says half the time, and Pete’s totally scripted responses to judging the food.

  18. They’re little bit different since MKR are teams of two and MC only has 1 person in the competition.

    But some challenges are almost the same.

    Like the Childrens fair Challenge on MKR this year
    MCdid basically the same thing last year except it was at a girls birthday party.

    MKR just does cooking and the contestants using their imagination.

    But MC gets incredibly more challenging. Such as making Amateur cooks do really hard dishes that the professional chef has prepared for them.
    The Mystery Box challenges
    Tasting particular ingredients
    Knowing your food
    Masterclass
    etc….

    But I enjoy watching MKR I like Pete and Manu 🙂

    And I enjoy watching MC

    LOL Gary don’t get mad at Manu XD for using a line. They probably use it in other cooking shows.

  19. So, “your time is up ” is a master chef saying? I am quiet sure i have heard that saying before. If only i could figure out where………………….
    Master chef is nothing more than a cooking competition. So is mkr. Nothing original about either shows really.

  20. Well done Gary! MKR is a rip off and Ten should sue! I say only bid with Nine or Foxtel for the tv rights of the AFL and let Seven suffer. With James Warburton, Eleven and a revamped One HD things can only get better. It is about time Ten became number 1 and Seven can be number 3 like Ten was all those years. Seven really should be beaten by SBS considering the quality of Seven’s shows and the fact they rip off other shows, act like greedy little children and love to negatively criticize the competition yet they don’t do they to their own programs.

    Bring on Masterchef! The real cooking show!

  21. This article or story goes further to renforce my view of the Australian Tv landscape. That is that creativity in the australian industry is dead, and berried or dumped into the ocean if cremated. The 90s was the last decade of any sort of creativity in all genres. This latest tiff is a further indication that ripping off shows keeps going on and will continue to go on. Sad really sad.

  22. I totally agree with Garry’s comments, I thought MKR was about home cooked dishes. This is true for the first 2 weeks of the show, then it just becomes Masterchef “Couples” addition.

  23. Tis obvious Seven got jelous over Masterchef series 1 success and decided in 2010 to put in a copycat and see if it will rate! It doesn’t rate as well and has very little “amazing challenges”. They don’t have the “mystery box”, they have more Wed night MC ep challenges. Wed night is the night where we usually got a team challenge on MC. So they seem to have decided to expand on the MC “team challenge” and polay them 3x in a week. I do admit an Asian Kitchen is a place no home cook should be in and infact why have judges who are classifed as, “restaurntur”! It’s home cooking not Restaurant cooking. Maybe Julie Goodwin and Nigella Lawson could judge and give us a real show that deons’t say “step away from your benches”

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