Colin Hogg: An overdose of food and politics

Megan Dobson, left, and Kelly du Toit were sent home. Photo / APN

Extra nasty cooking show offers some relief to endless pre-election seriousness and parliamentary fantasies.

I turned to television in search of clues, as you do in times of national crisis, this one brought to near breaking point at the weekend by the careless confluence of the looming election and a nail-biting elimination round of My Kitchen Rules NZ.

But it's all politics, whether it's in the kitchen or on the campaign trail, which, like the road, seems to go on forever. There are rumours that the current fixation with politicians will all be over come this Saturday's election, but don't bet on it.

The pundits and presenters will be examining its cooling entrails for weeks to come, long after the rest of us have switched to something much more interesting.

Like My Kitchen Rules NZ (TV One, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday 7.30pm), for instance, a passingly compelling series of kitchen crises in the guise of a cooking competition with many of the usual ingredients, such as celebrity chef judges and an ever-ticking clock.

This franchise's point of difference is that the competitors judge each other, introducing a bold new level of nastiness to proceedings, which can be fun up to the point where it's just plain bitchy.

Sunday night's episode featured Hawkes Bay sisters Kelly and Megan in the hot spot, cooking for the competing teams and the judges, chefs Ben Bayly and Gareth Stewart, a pair of smoothies who seem to know their stuff.

But it was tears in the kitchen, in the dining room and, finally, all over the judging segment, as Kelly and Megan, who had so hoped to "get to proceed forward" were eliminated and sent home.

No one liked their cauliflower coulis and the pumpkin pie was a flop.

I felt sorry for them, but only briefly - you know, the way you might have felt watching Labour leader David Cunliffe on the weekend political shows, dreaming out loud about what he'd do if he was Prime Minister.

I got to see him doing the same sort of thing twice - on TV3's The Nation, on Saturday morning, and again on TV One's Q+A, 24 hours later. Just why we should be funding both of these shows remains a mystery, particularly with almost identical line-ups of set-piece interviews.

The Nation is always much more fun, though not in an entirely good way. Presenters Lisa Owen and Patrick Gower have an enormous shine to them, but often drive the tone to the tabloid zone with their mad hunt for headline moments.

On Saturday, the show stretched out to 90 minutes for interviews with the lead singers from all the big political groups - John Key, Cunliffe, Russel Norman, Colin Craig and Winston Peters.

I believe the main points of difference were that while Key favoured the phrase "what I would say is this" while Cunliffe preferred "let me say this".

Analysts Mike Williams (from the left) and Matthew Hooton (from the right) came on and disagreed about everything and there was an interview with Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist suddenly famous here for his concerns about the mass surveillance of New Zealanders.

More fun was Torben Akel's field report from various backblocks on the political state of the nation, though not quite as much fun as Politics in a Minute, the satire spot with Jeremy Corbett and Paul Ego.

TV One's Q+A on Sunday was more of a laugh-free zone, but the seriousness brought returns in political editor Corin Dann's interview with a tough-talking John Key, defiant in the face of the spy accusations.

Elsewhere, Cunliffe came on to do his now finely-honed fantasy routine and Green Party co-leaders Norman and Metiria Turei were encouraged to speculate on being co-prime ministers.

And there was Greenwald again, worried about our privacy. And the panel, as usual, a dull business.

After all that, the kitchen show was almost a relief.