Multi-generation, culturally diverse families competing in a new cooking show while being judged by an actual royal and a bald man who quite possibly wrote his own Wikipedia page: welcome to the future of Australian reality TV.

Ten has MasterChef, Seven has My Kitchen Rules, and now Nine has Family Food Fight, a new reality cooking show featuring six families competing to be crowned Australia’s best amateur chefs through a series of challenges “inspired by real home cooking and family food traditions”. What’s not to love?

Both MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules have been ratings gold for the commercial networks so it was only a matter of time before Nine tried to crack the market. And it seems like the channel is conscious of the criticism levelled against reality shows like The Block and The Bachelor for their failure to represent Australia’s cultural diversity on screen.

Even though cooking shows are generally more representative of the wider population than most other reality shows, Family Food Fight is attempting to make its diversity a key selling point. But will it work?

Given Nine’s less than stellar record on race issues when it comes to shows like Today, The Block and The Footy Show, it’s fair to be a little cynical. But let’s take a look at how it’s stacking up.

The Contestants

Here’s how The Australian described Family Food Fight today: “Multi-generational ethnic families of four will champion their own cuisines while pitted against rival multicultural families in a cook-off.”

Hmm. While potentially entertaining that also sounds a lot like an ethnic cooking version of Hunger Games where the losing family gets deported. Hey, don’t get mad. We live in Pauline Hanson Australia. Everything is on the table.

It feels kind of weird to make the concept of multiculturalism one of the show’s key mechanics. Australia is very multicultural. Any decent cooking show should just be able to incorporate that without making a big fuss, like MasterChef does. The fact that Nine needs to shout about Family Food Fight‘s “multi-generational ethnic families” is a bit of a warning sign.

Take a behind-the-scenes look at new Channel 9 cooking show Family Food Fight, filming today in Kyneton. pic.twitter.com/r3hcwo5VQM

— Mark Kearney (@mnkearney) July 19, 2017

So who are these families?

According to Adrian Swift, Nine’s head of content production and development, “we have a Greek family, Italian family, Vietnamese family, Lebanese family and two Aussie families that are quite different.”

Ok hold up, Adrian. Unless you’ve just flown these families in from Athens, Rome, Hanoi, and Beirut, they are also “Aussie”.

Using “Aussie” as a euphemism for white is a very lame stereotype that helps perpetuate a dumb and outdated migrants vs. everyone else divide. If you’re going to do a cooking show that promotes multiculturalism, great. But when you use dumb language like that, you’re shooting yourself in the foot and just reminding everyone how out of touch you are.

But importantly, I feel sorry for the “Aussie” families competing on this show. What are they gonna do, cook up some bangers and mash to compete against delicious moussaka, bún chả and felafel? Good luck, skips.

The only way they would have a shot is if the judges are all incredibly bland and whitebread. Which brings us too….

The Incredibly Bland And Whitebread Judges

Unfortunately Family Food Fight has replicated the trope featured in both MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules where, despite a relatively diverse set of contestants, the judging panel is entirely white. Ethnic people cook food, they don’t critique it, duh!

Again, this shouldn’t be a deal breaker but the show is very keen for us to rate it on its apparent multicultural diversity. So who are the judges?

There’s MasterChef’s Matt Moran, former MasterChef contestant Hayden Quinn, MasterChef’s Anna Polyviou and food writer Tom Parker Bowles, the son of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

Three MasterChef personalities and a (sort of) royal. The bangers and mash might actually stand a chance.

What’s The Verdict?

The show doesn’t come out until later this year, so it would be unfair to give it a definitive review based on a few press releases. But even though the concept sounds like Nine is trying to do the right thing, the early signs are they might have overcooked (lol!) the whole thing.