The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Channel 4 promises ‘normal’ Bake Off
The Great British Bake Off will look as it always does when it returns to screens due to the cast and crew living and filming “in a bubble”, a Channel 4 executive has said.
Production of the 11th series was initially delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, but filming on the popular show finished last week.
Kelly Webb-Lamb, deputy director of programmes and head of popular factual for Channel 4, explained during a controller session at Edinburgh’s Television Festival that the “enormous” feat of getting the show back on air was due to stringent health and safety measures.
She said: “The feat of getting Bake Off back was enormous and enormously important. I think we all felt, I certainly felt that working to ensure we could get Bake Off back on the screen was such an important thing for us as a channel, such an important thing for the audience and Love Productions (who make Bake Off) were just full of ingenuity and determination to get it to happen.”
In the upcoming series, comedian Matt Lucas replaces Sandi Toksvig as the programme’s co-host alongside Noel Fielding.
The duo join judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood.
Webb-Lamb, who was talking alongside Channel 4 director of programmes Ian Katz, told the virtual festival about the measures that had been put in place including testing and quarantine regimes.
She explained: “We have worked hard with them to put testing and quarantine regimes in place beforehand for all talent, all cast, all crew, so that when we go into the bubble we know everyone there is negative.
“And that comes down to...the car you’re driving to set also has to be quarantined, nobody can have been in it for the time of quarantine and then everything that comes on to set has to be properly disinfected to protect everybody on set and the production.
“That then means that set is Covidsecure and that enables a little bit more flexibility so in the tent what you will see looks like normal Bake Off because it is normal Bake Off and we’ve been able to do that.
“That does mean the talent and cast and crew lived in that bubble for the duration of production which is obviously different to how we would normally make Bake Off.”