It was a strange sound, the wail of the hapless Daily Mail critic. “I wanted to hate it,” she wrote after seeing a preview of The Great British Bake Off, “BUT …” No, alas for carpers, knockers and the perpetually disappointed, more or less everyone enjoyed, or tolerated, the revised, Mary-less Bake Off. And more than 6 million viewers made it through the thickets of ads (roughly double the number Channel 4 says it needs to make a profit on its £25m-a- year transfer fee).
Who (provisionally) wins? Jay Hunt, the departing programme chief at Channel 4. She might, perhaps ought to have been, the new chief executive. At least she leaves on a high note. And Richard McKerrow and Anna Beattie at Love Productions can take a bow too. They may be picky, tricky talent who made Broadcasting House executives wince with contract pain, but Bake Off is their show, meticulously re-cast, carefully preserved (almost in aspic).
A great deal is written about independent production companies, but with much too little praise for the vision and precision they bring to their roles in a TV world where the channels themselves are often just platforms.
Turn up the heat under Voltage TV, then. Its The Great Family Cooking Showdown would seem to be the BBC’s browned-off riposte: a crowded, starchily scripted hour of simpering, hugging and mugging over chilli con veggies that wastes stars like Nadiya Hussain. Think of it more as a dummy run for the Great Family Christmas Nightmare.
