While I haven’t quite caught up to its newest season – nor am I prepared for the upcoming holiday edition – I’ve recently found myself tuning into The Great British Bake Off (now known on Netflix as The Great British Baking Show) most often out of boredom, a desire for uplifting content, or most commonly, an addictive intrigue. Interestingly, I’m not alone; the show touts consistently high ratings and a one-time record high of 14.8 million viewers, with an extraordinarily sound following through American Netflix. Although many English shows have found strong fanbases here in the States, with some popular programs even being remade for US television (think The Office and American Idol), at surface level, none would quite expect this humble cooking show to garner such remarkable figures. So, how exactly has it won millions of American hearts following its 2014 Netflix rebranding and subsequent US release?
Firstly, the down-to-earth casting, including both presenters and contestants, offers a refreshing contrast to the typical C-lister-to-awkward-Food-Network-host pipeline and professional baking team formula American networks love to stick to. Unlike these shows, all of Bake Off’s contestants are amateur bakers, which allows audiences to bake and eat vicariously through them, no matter their personal experience with or interest in cooking. In fact, the show has inspired many viewers to take up baking on their own. It portrays baking as an accessible activity by making each challenge look exciting and offering a realistic representation of its contestants; in turn, it’s inspired thousands who may have never considered taking baking seriously before but have now incorporated the practice into their personal lives.
Speaking of exciting challenges, the unique format of Bake Off is just one of the factors that sets it ahead of its competitors. Every week has its own theme; classics include Bread Week, Pastry Week, and Cake Week, with some unique categories thrown in for the given season. In each episode, contestants move through three rounds: the signature bake, the technical challenge, and the showstopper. They are encouraged to practice their signatures and showstoppers at home, but the technical is a complete surprise. The technical round is arguably the most unique of the challenges; few other shows will ask contestants to make the exact same bakes, made to look as perfect as possible and comparatively accurate to what is asked of them and what others are making. Although there is a large margin of error based on each individual’s experience with the bake in question, it is the most practically fair, as it highlights each contestant’s ability to execute near perfection purely off of a simple recipe.
If there’s one thing Americans and Brits have in common, it’s our love of binge-worthy television, a quality of GBBO that keeps both audiences hooked on a consistent watch schedule. While Channel 4 in the UK and Netflix both release episodes on a weekly basis, if you’re not completely caught up, it’s easy to find yourself watching several episodes in one sitting. Considering that each episode is nearly an hour long, it’s impressive that viewers are engaged for not only that full hour but are willing to digest several more hours’ worth of content due to their very real investment in the competition. This became a habit for many during the Coronavirus quarantine, which, along with the show’s reliable familiarity and consistency, directly assisted with its pandemic popularity.
Primarily, for Americans, the show serves as a break from the canned and overdramatized baking media that seems so overly prevalent in the States. The lack of staging and traditional stakes, particularly a cash reward, ensures that contestants aren’t overworking themselves or striving for perfection 100% of the time. This quality creates a more conducive environment for growth and improvement as bakers. Because of this, the competitors never learn to despise one another, but rather form close bonds, some going as far as meeting up in real life, which the show confirms with a heartwarming “where are they now?” slideshow at the end of each season finale. This also ensures that viewers don’t grow too bitter toward one particular contestant; while audiences may pick and choose their favorites, many individuals (including myself) find it hard to recall a contestant that they really hated, due to the abundance of positivity Bake-Off highlights within each cast member. Despite the production’s history of (albeit very few) controversies and criticisms (see the change in hosts), the content itself remains unfazed and wholesome, so much so that many parents will watch it with their children. Notably, the majority of its audience members fall into the 16-34 age range.
Though I can’t speak for its newest host and most recent seasons (last year’s “Mexican Week” already sounds like a fever dream), The Great British Bake Off is no stranger to success, and for valid reason. Maybe it really is this good – or maybe there’s a kind of sadism in watching people with proper accents perform for their lives in a 100-degree tent.
