THAT’S it then: Candice Brown has won The Great British Bake Off, the seventh and final BBC series has finished, and from next year the show will be on Channel 4 instead. But do not be upset because this could be good for television and for Bake Off.
The seventh series itself had all the familiar elements: extraordinary baking skill, a few wobbles, some double entendres (my favourite: “Can you grab my jugs?”) and the unsettlingly good partnership of Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood. Mary’s style is that of a visiting Royal who’s about to ask “what do you do?”, Paul’s style is that of a bouncer who’s about to ask “what do you think you’re looking at?”, and it works.
In making baking fashionable, Bake Off has also been good at challenging traditional, boring ideas of masculinity. Yes, there are lots of matronly women with a light dusting of baking powder on their bosoms, but someone like Andrew, who builds planes for a living, making moist metrosexual scones will do its bit towards freeing men from all the stereotypes they feel they have to live up to.
But all fluffy new formats go flat in the end and Bake Off has been showing the signs for a couple of years. The series itself is still likeable because it is, like many of its viewers, a pleasing mix of the genteel and the intense but this year’s winner has not been the easiest to like (was that ambition I saw in her eyes?), Mel and Sue have worn rather thin. And the enemy of all good television has started to kick in: familiarity.
Which means the move to Channel 4 could be the change Bake Off needs. Plenty of other formats and shows have changed presenters, channels, contestants, pretty much everything, and gone on to better things and the same applies to Bake Off. We know what this show tastes like don’t we? It’s time to chuck in some new flavours.
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