Australian Story puts Reality TV under the microscope
Former MasterChef contestant says Reality TV techniques make for traumatic stuff.
- Published by David Knox
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Former MasterChef Australia contestant Jules Allen tells Australian Story that Reality TV techniques make for traumatic stuff.
Introduced by Deborra-lee Furness.
This week’s program provides an intriguing glimpse behind the scenes of the reality TV phenomenon that’s captured the TV landscape in Australia.
Jules Allen left her large family to appear as a ‘willing hostage’ on the popular MasterChef reality TV show.
She admits she lusted after ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ but she was unprepared for the ‘excruciating’ highs and lows she encountered on the program and in its aftermath.
A single mother, she’s fostered twenty-nine children but she says managing a house full of hormonal teenagers pales alongside the psychological demands of MasterChef.
It’s become clear to Jules Allen that her experience is not unique. Psychologists and industry observers say the same techniques are used in most of the popular reality shows, from Big Brother to My Kitchen Rules.
Jules Allen reveals it’s left her ‘humbler’ with a clear sense of what actually matters in life…
8pm Monday on ABC1.
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- Tagged with Australian Story, MasterChef Australia
10 Responses
Masterchef is relatively tame compared to what MKR, The Block, House Rules and BB do.
wonder if they will speak to Kelly from MKR. She is struggling post show as well.
I guess jazzhands and jezza have had first hand experience of the excruciating poain of people in Syria and the Central African Republic. Let’s add Nigeria to that list, eh?
Nothing wrong with well-placed irony. I will wait until I see it.
This brief leaves a really sour taste in my mouth, as Jules was my favourite MasterChef contestant last season and I don’t get why you’d be surprised about the workings and constraints of filming a reality TV show before entering it; this genre isn’t exactly new anymore!
@jazzhands I also think folk in the Central African Republic will also be glued to their clockwork tvs also feeling her excruciating pain…
As Senator Harry S. Truman told a member of his war contracts investigating committee who objected to his strenuous pace- “If you don’t like the heat, get out of the kitchen”.
I watch ABC 90% of the time now, and am hardly an “intellectual snob”. I watch because, having worked in commercial TV since 1967, I hate seeing what it has now become.
Geez, what next? Australian Story doing an expose that WWE isn’t real?
So will this reveal anything anybody with a brain doesn’t already know or will it just be a Current Affair/Today Tonight style beat up.
Obviously she wanted another fifteen minutes talking complete bollocks on the ABC for intellectual snobs. I’m sure the people in Syria feel her ‘excruciating’ pain.