Great British Bake Off (BBC version)

On the day that the new Bake Off debuts on Channel 4, it seems only right to look back at what made the BBC version so special.  Luckily enough, Good Food seems to be endlessly repeating early seasons, which give you a taster of how the show looks when chopped up brutally with adverts.  It’s also a violent and unwelcome flashback to how the programme looked before it had the whole nation’s full attention.

The formula took a while to mature and develop over the first few series: casting the contestants, doing away with the stern male voiceover, not really dwelling on where the marquee was pitched and slowly phasing out the backstory VTs to the more obscure recipes.  Indeed, as time went on, the technical challenges became curiouser and curiouser until I was convinced someone was making them up and claiming their origins in far-flung countries and centuries that nobody would check (Tudor Week, anyone?).  But, harmonised with this honing of its flow and structure, the society in which it was broadcast also knew a greater need for the warm fuzzy feelings only a friendly baking challenge could elicit.

This was a show where people didn’t get cross with each other.  There was no swearing or conflict.  There was nothing sexual beyond chucklesome innuendos (cue reference to tarts and buns – tee hee).  The worst thing that could happen was a bit of burnt sponge or some raw pastry.  Maybe someone would put in too much ginger.  If only this was all that mattered in the real world.  What of course never mattered was the amount of butter and sugar being poured into each mix.

And so, each midweek episode saw us rushing home for the televisual equivalent of a hug, with Hollywood the stern (and slightly vampiric) dad, and Mary the grandma we all wanted to please, with nothing but nice things to say to those that were struggling.  On a food shoot I had to attend with work, I got chatting to a girl who had looked after Mary during Bake Off production.  With the marquee proving chilly in the British weather, Mary was allegedly kept under blankets and by a heater in the nearby stately home, awoken and brought out only to take determined toothy bites and to soothsay contestants.

As with all good shows, it became must-see viewing for any office drone.  Coming into work not knowing the results of the previous night’s episode was dicing with conversational death to say the very least.  Only by screaming and running out of the room could those yet to catch up ensure nothing was ruined for them.  Young and old alike could discuss in depth every familiar portion, from the signature bake to the showstopper, recalling every Mel and Sue double-entendre and their favourite cheery line from Mary Berry.  In fact, it was the only show I was able to watch together with one of my weirdest housemates (a forty four year-old Australian lady who once took herself to A&E on a Saturday night because she had constipation).

So many have tried to copy the format in order to apply a bit of competition to other seemingly banal household tasks; there was a Great British Sewing Bee and something about pottery (pottery?!).  I half expected for there to be something about my favourite domestic task, cleaning bathrooms.

I would like to take this opportunity to review some of my favourite contestants from the various seasons:

• Selasi from series seven: nobody cared less than he about the outcomes of his bakes
• Paul from series six: a man who tried to be cheerful but whose fury was betrayed by his very red face.  He seemed utterly embarrassed to be there, which made watching him bake strangely compelling
• Norman from series 5: who didn’t see the need to impress anyone or change anything he had been doing the whole time
• Flora from series 6: probably because, by the age of 19, she had achieved more with her life than I ever will at 32, I thoroughly enjoyed it when her bakes went wrong.  I need to sort myself out
• Kimberley from series 4: clearly hated the stupidity of everyone around her as they weren’t as smart, but gave nervous chuckles in order to hide her murderous intentions against the competition.  Everyone freaked out about having to make tuiles.  Cut to Kimberley: “I actually made these last week so smug smug smug.”  Loved her
• Nadiya from series 6: such character and hard work, yet we all were convinced that she had some awful husband controlling her life from home.  And he turned out to be an absolute babe when we saw him in the final and we all realised that we still harbour ridiculous prejudices, despite claiming to be liberal

While the Hollywood Handshake will still be a possibility over on Channel 4, we will never again hear Mary claiming she could take a bit more booze in her bake, or enjoy a good Mel and Sue pun when declaring the number of minutes left in a challenge.  Strange to think that a show can become such a part of our comfort system.

The Get Down

In an age where Netflix seems to be greenlighting anything with a mildly amusing title, The Get Down promised to be a good quantity of top quality.

The PR machine behind the show made as much as can possibly be made of the show’s co-creator and director/writer, Baz Luhrmann.  Lo, trumpeted the features in Sunday supplements read only by Brexit-voters, the director of films that everyone loves such as Moulin Rouge has only gone and decided that TV is indeed the new Hollywood and taken his attentions there.  From start to finish, The Get Down is unmistakably Luhrmannesque.  At least, that sentence sounds like a nice way of describing the whole thing, but it isn’t strictly true.

Each episode opens with footage of an indeterminate rapper spitting rhymes about his youth in the ghetto.  For a few moments, I thought I had clicked the wrong thing and was watching an identikit hiphopper in concert by mistake.  But no, this is the show’s framing.  Books, our hero, must have made it then.  But, even as I type this, I am not sure.  Cue a return to the nostalgia and vintage of late seventies New York and, more specifically, The Bronx.

I’m not going to harp on about the alleged budget per episode.  Whatever it was, it was completely worth it.  An air of menace from real crime and violence is maintained in the face of quite frankly “musical” musical numbers.  Vivid colours and unreal characters lace together to create something that feels historically accurate.  From a deep immersion into the era of disco, the viewer shares the excitement of the characters at the raw and bloody birthing of hip hop.

There are some animated sequences that don’t really add much to an already fantastical production design, and I admit to cringing every time the line “my butterscotch queen” was uttered, mostly because it reminded of my least favourite Angel Delight flavour being served in British primary schools and this couldn’t be further from the look and feel of the show.  There is also an open-ended dalliance into a gay crush which didn’t seem to go anywhere, resulting in something that felt watered down rather than glorious.

Justice Smith is a charismatic lead whose heartfelt rasp scores each episode, while, by contrast, Herizen F. Guardiola’s pure silken voice elevates some of the original songs to Spotify repeat play levels on a par with any of today’s top hits.  Racially, what’s not to love among all this diversity?  Though, I can still tell a character is Hispanic even without them having to say every third word in Spanish, making it all sound a little but like a GCSE listening exercise.

In the boxset stakes, many scoffed at the show’s apparent cancellation after only one series of two parts.  But Baz hadn’t failed.  Each episode is a masterpiece, a mini movie unrestrained by the forty five minute timelength dictated to us from traditional TV advertising.  The show ends because the story is finished.  And lo, again, I did weep at its conclusion, because the characters’ stories had ended too.  I felt a deep sense of having shared their experiences more profoundly than I was expecting.  I might have no chance of ever seeing them again, but I knew they were going to go on to be ok without me.