The key difference between March and May will be the station names attached to the programming. Channel Seven's My Kitchen Rules will be replaced by Channel Ten's MasterChef, Channel Nine's The Block Triple Threat will be replaced by Seven's House Rules, and Ten's I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! will be replaced by Nine's Married at First Sight, which reveals the post-wedding lives of strangers matched for compatibility by experts.

The networks are already working to convince us that their big launches of April won't be just a case of second verse, same as the first.

The first horse out of the gate will be the latest incarnation of MasterChef. It will continue last year's successful policy of mentoring talented people who want to follow their dreams, says George Calombaris✓, who has been judging it since it began in 2009. Also, it has added to the judging panel Shannon Bennett, who runs Melbourne three-hatted restaurant Vue de Monde.

"Shannon is one of the amazing chefs from around the world who want to be part of the show," Calombaris says. "You've got the likes of Massimo Bottura, No. 3 chef in the world, Heston Blumenthal and Marco Pierre White. It just goes to show the credibility of MasterChef and what it stands for."

The main difference this year will be that the standard of the contestants will be much higher than anything seen on television before.

"Hand on my heart, last year we thought the cooks were amazing, and they were, but hold on for this year. I'm flabbergasted at some of the stuff I'm seeing. You will see this year, particularly from a sweet point of view, some contestants where you'll just go, `Nah, nah, you're a freak. You're an absolute freak.' "

Calombaris concedes that a key reason for the quantum leap in standards is the big success of My Kitchen Rules. Australians generally and home cooks in particular now know much more about food than they did five years ago.

"In the beginning, we might have got them to make a lemon tart. Yeah, great, but they're so far beyond that now. These people are in their homes. They're cooking more. They're reading books. They're watching cooking shows. They've grown so much it's at another level now."

Calombaris doesn't watch My Kitchen Rules. He thinks judge Manu Feildel is "a lovely guy" and he's glad that the most-watched series on Australian television is about cooking, but "I don't really care to watch it. I'm not interested. At night I'm in my restaurant cooking anyway."

Why does My Kitchen Rules have twice the audience of MasterChef?

"What do you gauge success as?" Calombaris says. "The success of that show is in its ratings, but – you know what? – there are fast-food chains out there that do more covers than I do in my restaurants. Does it make them any better?

"You know about the amazing cooks this show has produced who are doing massive things in the food world. We think about Marian, Poh, Julie, Hayden – people who are actively in food as we speak. They're not fly-by-nighters. They're not just, `Oooh, I'm on TV', and then bang, they're gone. If you just want to be on TV, I don't care how good you can cook. You're not part of MasterChef.

"There have been close to 80 contestants and I reckon 70 of them are in the industry now. You don't need to win. You just need to have a dream and an idea and a goal. That's what the show does. It gives you this springboard and platform to get out there and get among it."

How does Calombaris respond to the criticism that the producers of MasterChef (and My Kitchen Rules) manipulate viewers by editing the footage into a soap opera, exaggerating the emotions of the contestants, and amplifying the experience with melodramatic music?

"All I know is I was there and I didn't need music to make me get very emotional. The emotion I get when I'm on set 14 hours a day and pushing these contestants and seeing the emotion that it brings out in them, there is nothing more real. I wish we could have a 24-hour MasterChef channel, where you could see the whole day pan out. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, if I had some.

"MasterChef is built on a certain integrity and belief. That's why I'm part of the show. It's a show that resonates not only for Aussies, but through all cultures, cuisines and religions. The Australian version is seen in 140 countries, dubbed in all sorts of languages."

Calombaris is comfortable with the job of pushing the contestants to their physical and intellectual limits. "You know why? Because there's $250,000 at the end of this. There are cars and book deals. There's a lot riding on it. We need to make the right decision.

"We will gauge how good they are as cooks at the beginning and, as we go along, if we think we can push them further, we will. We push them because we want to see them achieve. We want them ready and armoured up to face reality.

"[If] you deal with customers, staff, you've got to have a thick skin, you've got to be an octopus, you've got tot be a doctor, a teacher, a chemist, a psychologist, but that's why I love it."

MasterChef is expected to start in mid-April on Channel Ten.

ORDINARY IS THE NEW BLACK

A reality show without manufactured drama. How is that possible? A 21st-century food show without exotic ingredients. How is that possible?

If anyone can achieve those ambitions, it's Poh. This year she intends to surprise us by not surprising us.

When Poh entered the national consciousness in 2009, she was half of an iconic image that symbolised the best of old and new Australia. There, as finalists in the most-watched television episode of the noughties, were housewife Julie Goodwin and artist Poh. One face symbolised comfortable, relaxed, traditional Australia, nostalgic for an Anglo heritage. The other face symbolised adventurous, energetic, modern Australia, eager for an Asian future.

Although Julie was the winner, Poh was the hero. She became our Madonna, Oprah, Adele or Beyonce – an icon so well known that she needed only one name. (She does, in fact, have other names – three of them, now that she has married Jono, whom she met when he was working for MasterChef. The other names are Ling Yeow Bennett.)

Since 2009, Poh has travelled around the world doing 53 episodes of a series called Poh's Kitchen for the ABC, and regular guest appearances in talk shows and comedies. Here's what happened when an SBS producer came to her home in Adelaide last year, and asked her what kind of show she wanted to do next:

"He said, `What excites you?' and I said, `It's all here. I'm a complete homebody. I love to cook. I love making art. You could leave me stranded here for a month and I wouldn't miss anyone. I would be quite happy just to potter in the garden, cook and do creative things in my studio.' That became the platform that it all kind of grew from."

The essence of Poh & Co, which starts on SBS this week, is the two things it will not include: travel and drama.

Here's why it won't include travel: "Foodie travel has been a bit overdone now. There are a lot of generic ones around. I've done a lot of it personally, and I didn't want to do that any more. I really needed to stay put. I wanted to make a show that everyone can relate to. The problem with the travel show is sometimes you're around really obscure exotic ingredients that no-one else has access to. That doesn't interest me. My interest is to encourage people to cook at home. For that you need to make all your ingredients and the way you cook accessible."

But surely Poh's reputation, starting with MasterChef, is for being exotic and experimental?

"My Asian cooking still happens in the show, but it's stuff you can buy in the market. I feel Australia is very adventurous, so going to an Asian grocer is not a big deal."

Apart from the recipes, Poh & Co will be a kind of documentary about her life, but not a reality series as we've come to know them, with manufactured plot lines. Here's why: "There's one thing I can't stand about TV at the moment – it's all about jeopardy, at the expense of everything. I didn't want the show to be like that. It's just ordinary, my day-to-day living. There are comedic elements to when things get a little bit hairy, but it's not, `Oh, will she fall flat on her face?' It's not about that. It's just average suburban aspirations."

It sounds like a quiet show. How will she get viewers excited?"

"I don't think people need to be excited," Poh says. "People's sense of all that kind of stuff is heightened now, and it's boring, in a way. I think if you do something that's authentic, people sense that. That's what's lacking in television. They always try to manufacture hype, manufacture jeopardy. How I find a creative point of difference is to not have that. I don't think it's necessary."

She may be onto something.

Poh & Co starts on SBS One on Thursday at 8pm.

For more, see smh.com.au/entertainment/blog/the-tribal-mind.