Before watching Forged in Fire, I read up about it. Apparently it’s “like the Bake Off, only with Viking battleaxes, Samurai swords and Indian claw daggers”. Is it really? Because a show that involves people forging deadly weapons of war from molten steel doesn’t sound much like the one where people stand in a pastel-green kitchen and make bakewell tarts.
But anyway, I’m pretty excited about seeing “Bake Off, only with battle axes”. It sounds cool. And, besides, it’s not that far-fetched, because format-wise, the two shows are identical. It’s just that instead of flour and buttercream, there are blocks of W2 high-carbon welding steel. And the “technical challenge” where you once had to conjure up some salted caramel profiteroles has been refigured so that you’re expected to “recreate an iconic blade from history” – things like a war hammer or a chakram or a crusader sword. (“The European knight’s weapon of choice as they conquered the holy land”, the voiceover cheerfully explains.) The contestants are still sweet and nerdy, and tell heartwarming family tales, such as the guy who looks like the drummer from Blur recalling how he made his daughter a sword for her fifth birthday.
Most like the Bake Off, though, is the way the show forces you to reconsider your career options. Remember that time you wanted to jack it all in and go off to make muffins? Well, after watching just a couple of episodes of this thing I had a browser open hunting for blacksmith courses. Why be stuck in the office writing blogs when I could be melding things that could slice through your face like it was a stem of par-boiled broccoli?
Funnily enough, it was midway through a daydream about which of my colleagues I’d like to stick a Japanese katana through first, that I suddenly realised that Bake Off was maybe missing a trick. Because if people are robbing its format and making it sexier, maybe they need to rob these shows’ ideas in revenge. What I’m basically saying is, someone needs to make the Bake Off … but with knives!
Imagine it! Women called Rosaline diving behind bread bins as Mary Berry comes at them with a crudely designed war hammer. Pavlova sponges decorated solely with the ruptured stomach lining of Paul Hollywood after Mabel, 71 from East Fife, hurls a rusty chakram across the pantry. And only one contestant left standing at the end of it all, splattered with fondant and gore, holding up the head of Mel Giedroyc and cackling into the crisp night sky. I’d watch that. It’d be like Bake Off ... only with more viewers.
Forged in Fire starts on Thursday 24 March at 10pm on the History Channel.
