New York ? “This one,” says Martha Stewart, “this is the one I want.”

Stewart, who makes an art of knowing what she wants, has chosen the best coconut from a platter holding several. A good coconut is “heavy for its size,” she explains, and as she hefts this one for a demonstrative shake, it responds with a robust, sloshy sound.

On her show in a few minutes, Stewart and a guest will explore the joys of coconuts, including the knack of cracking them. She has even brought to the studio her own machete, an impressive utensil she got awhile back in Brazil.

“I love to open coconuts with it,” she says.

Here on the set of her syndicated daily hour last week, Stewart is about to tape one of several practice shows.

But soon she will be on the air for real. Monday, “Martha” premieres in just about every market in the nation. It’s a lifestyles show over which she will preside in front of a studio audience, complete with cooking, entertaining, decorating and home renovation how-tos, along with celebrity guests.

Marcia Cross, who as Bree Van De Kamp on “Desperate Housewives” plays a domestic diva bent on beating Martha Stewart at her own game, will be Stewart’s first guest.

Then, little more than a week after that, she hits prime time with “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.” Premiering Sept. 21 on NBC, that series will air 7 p.m. Wednesdays.

Martha Stewart is pictured during an Aug. 25 news conference on the set of her new syndicated daytime show Martha in New York. The show premieres on Monday.

So she is back with a splash. Having just shed the electronic shackle from her ankle, and with nearly six months of house arrest behind her, Stewart, 64, is eager to move beyond the scandal that began almost three years ago and led to her conviction, and five-month jail term in West Virginia, for lying to authorities about a stock sale.

But this isn’t just a comeback. Collectively, her two TV series aim to introduce her as a new Martha, a better-than-ever Martha, a playful Martha in marked contrast to the chilly, uptight perfectionist she was seen as before, even by some of her biggest fans.

“What’s Martha really like?” is a question both shows will address, Mark Burnett said. Hint: “She’s funny, warm, engaging, intelligent and very witty.”

Burnett is the creator of “Survivor” and the Donald Trump-starring “Apprentice,” and serves as an executive producer of both Stewart’s series.

“I think the biggest gift that Mark Burnett has given to this company – and to Martha, too – is making her comfortable with showing all sides of her persona,” says Susan Lyne, president of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

Building her company from scratch, Stewart had long felt a need “to be perfect on some level as a role model for all these hundreds of people she was bringing along,” Lyne theorizes. But with hard-won perspective from her months spent away, “she recognized that there was a big team of people here who had learned from her, who were very, very good at their jobs – and would allow her now to be a freer person on television.”