Can The Great British Bake Off get back to basics?

The Great British Bake Off has become a microcosm of the age of streaming. While the show remains thoroughly British, with Paul scoffing at American fruit pies (“to make a good American pie, you almost have to make it British”), audiences around the world have found its universal themes addictive.

The Great British Bake Off started broadcasting on BBC Two, and after becoming the most popular show on that channel, it was moved to BBC One. While airing on BBC One, it was licensed by PBS, introduced to American audiences, and continued its meteoric rise to popularity. After Season 7 aired to a record-breaking audience, contract negotiations between the BBC and Love Productions, the company that produces the show, fell apart, and it moved to Channel 4.

Paul Hollywood stayed on, moving to Channel 4 where he was joined by fellow judge Prue Leith, and presenters Noel Fielding, and Sandi Toksvig, but loyalty to the BBC prompted beloved presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins to leave the show, followed shortly by judge Mary Berry.

After moving to Channel 4, the show saw a drop in viewership, but was also picked up by Netflix.

With low stakes (the grand prize is an etched cake stand) and lovable contestants, The Great British Bake Off is competitive reality television in its most positive light. The contestants support one another through successes and failures, help one another out in stressful situations, and the entire endeavor feels more like a team project than a cutthroat competition. “Their earnest exuberance and the seriousness with which they glaze a cake or shape a pizza is what carries the show,” writes Annaliese Griffin in Quartz.

The lighthearted innuendos and double entendres that bring “controversy” to the show feel quaintly human-sized. While its aggressive Britishness, with cups of tea and Victoria sponges everywhere, can read like “a recruitment video for membership in some twee and cutesy new reboot of the Empire,” according to Tom Whyman, the rhythmic, not-too-high highs and not-too-low lows feel like an antidote to polarization and the often intractable issues of the modern world. Every problem within the small, sweet world on the screen can, and will, be solved with cake.

Pillsbury and trademark law are behind the slightly confusing naming conventions the show has to follow. UK audiences have The Great British Bake Off, while American audiences are watching The Great British Baking Show. The trademarked Pillsbury Bake-Off—a competition started in 1949 to celebrate the company’s 80th anniversary—conflicted with the British baking competition’s title, and the company wasn’t willing to come to an agreement or allow the show to use “Bake Off” in the title.

14: Seasons, or series, in total

167: Total contestants, so far

$0: Prize money for the winner

16+ million: Viewers for the Season 7 finale, the show’s highest ever, though Netflix is infamously tight-lipped about viewership numbers, so it’s hard to say what the global reach has been since the show has been streaming

Up to 13: Hours a day spent shooting one episode, for two days in a row

9: Number of contestants who have won star baker at least three times

1,000+: Times Paul Hollywood has reminded us what a good crumb structure looks like

In 2014 the hashtag #Bingate trended on Twitter when, rather than presenting a melted cake to the judges, a contestant named Iain threw his baked Alaska in the trash and presented the bin. What seemed like a relatively small moment in reality TV history went viral, because it was unclear whether or not another contestant had caused the accident by leaving Iain’s ice cream out while re-arranging the freezer. PBS explains the show’s most infamous controversy in hilarious detail.

Since those innocent days of binned ice cream cake, the show has experienced more serious controversies. In 2020, the GBBO tried a Japanese-themed week, and was criticized for setting challenges that were not actually Japanese in origin, and when contestants used ingredients and flavors that were Chinese or South Asian, rather than Japanese. After “Mexican Week” aired in 2022, Tejal Rao wrote in The New York Times that it was, “an hour of incompetent exposition, farcical bumbling and maracas-shaking.” Though previous Danish and Italian week challenges had not raised nearly as many eyebrows, the show has, as of the new season, sworn off country-based themes in favor of returning to specific baking techniques or categories of baked goods.