If you’re looking for a quintessentially British TV show, you don’t have to look much further than The Great British Bake Off. Often the highlight of a gloomy Autumn evening, when the outdoors is beginning to look decidedly unappealing and staying inside seems like a much better bet, The Great British Bake Off is a must-watch. Twelve home-bakers enter the tent in episode one, then many challenges, tears, and cake-induced meltdowns later, one person is deemed to be the best of that year’s batch. It is a fairly simple concept but with twelve series (over two different channels), a children’s spin-off, and over twenty international versions, it is a decidedly successful one.
So what do we really love so much about The Great British Bake Off?
The first answer is one that can be true for any long-running series and that’s familiarity—when you sit down to watch an episode, you know exactly what you’re going to get. There are always three challenges, someone will win star baker, someone will go home, and we’ll see a smattering of British wildlife (and weather) in scenes in between. Of course, baking brings its own unique set of dramatic situations, but nothing’s on the line. There’s no voting, contracts or prize money involved, so the stakes are about as low as can be, making it the perfect show to wind down to. Each episode welcomes us back into a format we’ve enjoyed again and again, not throwing up any unpleasant surprises, staying comforting and constant in a world that, in the last year especially, is often anything but. Recent studies have even looked into why re-watching our favourite shows can be helpful in times of anxiety, so it wouldn’t be surprising if watching a show with a repeated format turned out to have a similar effect.
Yet in terms of familiarity, it doesn’t just seem to be the format of the programme itself that does all the work. Although every year brings an entirely new set of contestants to the tent, there’s something that can always be counted on, at least one baker will recount their story of learning to bake with a loved one, often a grandparent or older relative. Then in most series, there tends to be a slightly older baker, oftentimes the spokesperson for traditional recipes and flavours. Whilst at first glance these two observations appear to be somewhat besides the point, they have more of an impact than we initially realise.
It’s no coincidence that so many bakers over the years have shared tales of recipes passed down through the family or memories of learning to bake with their grandma, because it’s an experience many of us, myself included, have been lucky enough to have. So when someone says their bake is inspired by time in the kitchen as a child or is a tribute to a lost relative, we can find ourselves transported into a world of nostalgia, back to long-forgotten memories we didn’t know we still had. Thoughts that are then embodied in the retired, traditional home baker, who for many, reminds them of the person they were first taught to bake by.
The inclusion of a range of ages is just one of the ways that the show promises a hugely diverse lineup every year. There’s always someone for everyone to root for. The person with quirky style, the person who picked up baking later in life, the person who’s sprucing up traditional bakes with the flavours of their family heritage. Different series have all served to challenge stereotypes or ask us to see the world from another perspective in some way, whether that’s showing us why baking is important to a stay-at-home dad or how it helped someone make friends after moving to a new country. The Great British Bake Off is a quintessentially British programme that shows us just how diverse and layered and beautifully complex Britain is.
We love Bake Off because it’s a show that showcases the good, making us feel comfortable and content in the embrace of childhood memories. It tells us to help other people when things go wrong because we’re all just trying to do our best. We see how a simple thing like bread can turn a random group of completely different people into fast friends. Even when there’s drama, it’s the most polite argument you’ve ever seen.
A light-hearted competition without controversy, Bake Off rises to the occasion every Autumn to remind us that there are always glimmers of positivity to be found somewhere, even if only in cake.