Manu, MKR and My Kitchen Rules

Mastered the art of casting ... My Kitchen Rules judges Manu Feildel and Pete Evans.

There is no definitive recipe for television. Successful and unsuccessful programs are sometimes indistinguishable from one another, their future shaped only by the schedule and the peculiar tastes of the audience.

But one ingredient stands tallest: casting. In the ''who, what, where, when, how and why'' of television, ''who'' is the most important. If you step past the physical aspects of production, the intangible magic comes from the casting room.

Legendary producer Aaron Spelling said it about scripted drama, suggesting that merely writing a character such as Dynasty's Alexis Carrington wasn't enough; it took an actor to turn the words into something extraordinary. And two actors with the same script can deliver very different results.

The same goes for reality TV. The format, structure and gimmicks are meaningless if the casting isn't right. The Voice became a titanic success because of it, the first iteration of Big Brother was eventually binned because of it, and My Kitchen Rules appears to have mastered it: the dark, intangible art of casting.

For drama, the well is bottomless. Every year, new and interesting actors surface. Reality TV has a much bigger challenge, particularly those shows that depend on a much shallower pool: celebrities.

In 2013, Channel Seven will launch Celebrity Splash, a diving reality series that puts celebrities on the high board. Finding the right mix of celebrities will, no doubt, be a big challenge. In the meantime, Channel Nine has announced the cast of its third Celebrity Apprentice and, with respect, it's a slightly uneven mix of a few genuinely famous people with demi-notables mixed in.

What makes this Apprentice cast particularly interesting is that in terms of star wattage, it looks more like a sixth or seventh season, not a third, which confirms what we suspect might be true: TV is casting celebrity reality shows from an increasingly shallower pool. Seven would want to think hard before it dives head first into it.