Star Plus will ring in the New Year by cooking up some innovative recipes in the fourth season of its cooking reality show ‘Masterchef India’.
The show is presently in pre-production stage. The auditions for the contestants are being held across 24 cities in India.
Although a time slot has not been fixed yet, ‘Masterchef India’ season four will launch early next year and will occupy the weekday band on the channel, similar to season three. In the third season, the show occupied the 8 pm slot on the channel. With a strong fiction line-up presently, it is yet to be known where the show will be placed.
Confirming the news to TelevisionPost.com, Star Plus SVP programming Ashish Golwalkar said that they are presently working on the designing and casting, and will announce other details soon.
Golwalkar stated that chef Sanjeev Kapoor and Vikas Khanna will return to the screen as judges, mentors and hosts in this season as well. There will be a third judge, and the channel is in the process of finalising a name.
A new element that will be seen this season is that Masterchef India will go vegetarian. The show will focus on showcasing the rich heritage of India through various vegetarian recipes.
Golwalkar states that the concept of going vegetarian will help in bringing a fresh element to the show.
Reportedly, the idea behind bidding adieu to the non-vegetarian food items is to give a chance to vegetarian cooking enthusiasts. Contestants cooking non-vegetarian food too will also get a chance to showcase their vegetarian culinary skills.
The auditions kicked off on 16 October in Ranchi and the rounds will culminate on 16 November in Mumbai. The winner of Masterchef India season three, chef Ripu Daman Handa, is the judge of the audition rounds.
The 24 cities included are Ranchi, Udaipur, Dehradun, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Dehradun, Amritsar, Baroda, Bangalore, Rajkot, Indore, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Patna, Nagpur, Varanasi, Surat, Chandigarh, Gwalior, Delhi, Jaipur, Bhopal and Mumbai.
Source: Televisionpost.com
