On Your Marks, Get Set, Baaaaake! A Thread for Great British Baking Show / Bake Off & all of its sundry delights

carry on up yr beaver and what have you

dan giving me a bit of a richard the builder vibes, he’s quite good & v charming

loved amos :(

one of my friends used to bang on about the missing raspberry but it always just seemed like some sort of faux-“ocd” dogwhistle so i ignored her lol

kinda loved that everyone hurdled the technical pretty nicely, i like when that happens

I'm surprised it took this long to do the title sequence cake as a technical, a really nice idea which they all executed reasonably well.

always fun in episode 1 to guess who's off by the amount of coverage they get during the show: the skimmed-over people are obviously going to hang around

They also do this in the Apprentice, someone always shows up in a task in about week 3 and me and my husband both look at each other and go "where did that person come from?". Cristy was that person tonight, I swear she just popped up halfway through the show and we were all "no, wait, she hasn't been in it all the way through, has she? Did she just sneak in?"

For all the hype about Alison Hammond, I thought she was... fine? Maybe she comes across better in the later episodes when there's more room for her shenanigans in the final edit. (I say this as someone who likes Alison Hammond enormously.)

that extra slice table looks *tiny* after 3 years of social distancing

This is such inessential viewing this year, I completely forgot to watch it last night.

I watched it and still don't think I could tell you who was star baker and who left. It's just TV wallpaper this year.

Noel is really annoying this year, like he's really ramped up the mischievous pranking to compensate for Alison just being *nice*. Honestly I'd just tell him to fuck off if he was standing there breaking stuff while I'm trying to win a competition.

Haha, I honestly can't remember who left either. Was it Dana? There's no obvious winner this year at all. It's just so nothingy.

Can't remember her name but it was the young 'fur baby mummy'.

Saw a thing on twitter yesterday from a friend who's rewatching old Blankety Blank episodes (who says we don't know how to have fun) and a contestant says to Wogan "can you just be quiet for a bit Terry, I'm trying to concentrate". Would be refreshing if someone said that to Noel.

Actually that's telling in and of itself that over halfway through the series I still don't think I know anyone's name except Dan.

dana left
star baker was some bloke

I like Tasha.

Also like Tasha a lot, she seems nice in an unstudied, not practicing-for-TV kind of way.

Alison's USP is her "realness", but it feels like she's trying to keep the hardworking showbiz striver part of her personality under wraps, and (to me, anyway) the dissonance is a bit off-putting. And, like Matt and Noel, she seems curiously uncurious about the contestants - this was Mel and Sue's key strength and what's been horribly missing since they left

When Noel takes himself seriously, which is almost never, he's a decent host. But his unboundaried creepiness is quite ugly to watch

On the other hand I'm very glad there are fewer comic bits since Matt left. And weird Paul is still weird Paul, which is good.

Sewing Bee and Pottery Throwdown are much more enjoyable IMO, perhaps because they don't have to flatten it out for overseas sales

i like the way tash signs under her breath (as it were) when she's talking

and how when she was stressed the mix of talking and signing flipped.

(Woodworker is back on ch4 by the way. and there's always Forged in Fire on one of the fives)

Sewing Bee and Pottery Throwdown are much more enjoyable IMO, perhaps because they don't have to flatten it out for overseas sales

Do you think that's what it is? I never considered that. But you're right that we don't seem to be learning much about the contestants this year. I wonder if that's a deliberate policy to try to protect them on social media? Not be seen to be too intrusive?

Anyway, I half-watched it last night while doing something else. As is the way.

we don't seem to be learning much about the contestants this year

I'm not sure if this isn't a function of escalating 'journeys' and to a degree kayfabe in previous years.

This year we have had the one whose life is defined by foraging, the dead acceptance journey has had a reasonable amount of airtime, we knew quite a lot about Nicky and her love of animals, there's the one doing his PhD who is clearly on the spectrum (flagged by taking a cuddly toy to the rugby), Matty(?) is being pushed as a LAD as they mention being a football fan most weeks, Christy can barely get through a sentence without pointing out she's a mother... so the narrative is there, it's just either more mundane than usual or the stories have been repeated through so many stories they now just feel like lazy tropes.

I think that's it. It's just the same one or two things over and over so you can identify people. There's nothing really there.
I don't know if that's even the reason it seems so dull. Maybe they are all just too hot to be bothered chatting properly. Everyone's concentrating too hard on not fainting, and that includes the presenters and crew.

i agree that I'm finding it less compelling TV than in the past, but am struggling to put my finger on exactly why. is it that the baking itself is getting just a smidge less attention? there's the usual flurry from step to step, mixing this, proving that, but i feel like the percentage of airtime that used to go to people walking through their process and decisions has been cut back, just a smidge.

but probably it's more the casting/characterization stuff. it all does feel a bit flatter.

or maybe I've just run out of ways to be fully invested in the structure of somebody's dough after all these seasons!

I love Saku a lot

Saku is lovely! … I loved Rohan and Maree so their double elim was rough

I guess I’m going for Tash now

Yeah I want Tasha to win but I really hope Saku gets to the final as she is the epitome of wonderful television

definitely agreed with the Tash and Saku appreciation, i also adored Nicky. Dan seems like a good baker and a good sport. the whole rest of the cast hasn't clicked with me.... I sympathized with Christy's struggle this past ep but never really got personally involved. idk.

I never know whether I can safely look at this thread as an American, aren't we several weeks behind the UK broadcast?

i think last year it was just tuesday - friday of the same week. maybe it's changed.

last week in the UK was week 6, "botanicals", on tuesday it's week 7, "desserts"

(week 7 already)

It's Tuesday UK and same ep Friday on US Netflix, yup.

(of course, adjusting to UK concepts of "dessert," "pudding" and "biscuit" is beyond the power of any chart or timetable)

why did i say maree?! i meant NICKY obv

rohan won my heart when he sighed after a crap bake “you just want an easy life”

Yeah, I liked Rowan too. I don't really care about the rest of them. Saku is funny, but I'm not sure she's that good a baker.

i dont really mind that no-one is an amazing standout this year

the even playing field makes it more chill? idk. its an amateur contest after all & the proliferation of crap bakes is reassuring lol

Really enjoying the show this year, after barely finishing it last year. The bakers are good. The challenges are better. I think Noel to be v funny, and Alison a good balance - warmer to the bakers, where Matt Lucas was just stiff, awkward and alienating, but she's still funny. Was debating with my partner whether to bother this year, but the other weekend we got through three eps in one sitting.

To be clear, I think Saku is an inconsistent baker under these circumstances but I would absolutely eat anything she made for me and also she is just great on TV; absolutely the right combination of endearing and hilarious that makes me root for her even when it looks like she’s bungling the challenge.

i really miss rowan, he was so funny. you could tell they gave him a star turn in his final episode

i really miss rowan, he was so funny. you could tell they gave him a star turn in his final episode

I like alison a lot too! and just going to ignore the noel slander…

the “backstories” are always irrelevant imo, they’re making dessert this isn’t like an election or something. and over the years the quality of baker has skyrocketed, they’re all like semi-professional bakers at least anyway afaict

at first i thought Dan was giving me Richard the builder vibes from the King Louis season but he’s starting to irrationally grate on me a little i think bc he’s so incessantly upbeat lol

omg this week’s technical is *chef’s kiss*

I did like the fact that Paul continued to complain about it into the next day, when it was clearly his fault that people didn't have enough time to do it properly.

I also love Saku and want to hang out with her and her family - they all seem like a laugh, and she clearly has stories and jokes to burn. Who knows, maybe she'll end up on Gogglebox. That would be great.

I'm enjoying this season. I like all the contestants, I want them all to do well, and I don't want any of them to go. Also, Alison Hammond brings a cheerful, easy warmth that Matt Lucas and Sandi Toksvig were never able to supply. It's nice. I like nice.

US viewers, you have a glorious technical to look forward to.

I also like that they all seem lovely on Extra Slice too - Dana was a hoot on that last week.

I did not enjoy that technical at all. I do not enjoy watching a parade of fail when it's clearly not their fault, like when they make them do ice creams and chocolate on the hottest day of the year. But they were all very graceful and supportive and able to laugh about it as it was just such a collective disaster.

Yes, when the best half of your chosen baker who have already been through some quite hard screening *all* fail to do what you set them then the fault is with you, you walking mid-life crisis and not them. Still sulking about it just exposes you as the male menopause personality crisis you are.

I did like the fact that Paul continued to complain about it into the next day, when it was clearly his fault that people didn't have enough time to do it properly.

It's all on Paul. I be he didn't complete his in 90s minutes or whatever.

Matty has quietly become my favourite. I sort of feel he won't last much longer but he is very good value.

At least on Masterchef the Professionals (cooking doesn't get tougher than this!) you watch Marcus or Monica do the skills test in twenty minutes, so you know what is just about possible in that time if you're really good (I know there's editing, but y'know). And the producers will probably say "oh, there has to be jeopardy, nobody wants to watch people succeed at making a load of almost identical treacle puddings", but that is exactly what I want. I want to see people succeed and make lovely things and be pleased with themselves.

Yeah, I don't really give a toss if they're 5-10 mins over - these are amateur bakers! That technical was just a joke tbh.

Paul Hollywood is just the Jeremy Clarkson that gives middle aged women the horn instead of middle aged men.

Ugh no, he’s the silverback we all love to hate.

He's softened a bit over the last couple of years but he's still very obviously a turd