Bake Off remains a perfectly formed slice of television
Don’t go, Mary. Please stay, Mel and Sue. Each episode of The Great
British Bake Off (BBC One) is becoming like an elegy for departing friends. There are now a mere four instalments remaining of the contest in its current incarnation on the BBC – that’s four more weeks to wallow in one of the most perfectly constructed TV shows in recent memory. It’s enough to drive a viewer to drink. By which I mean tea. With cake, obviously.
There were seven hopefuls left standing, whom Mel and Sue naturally compared to the seven dwarves: “Flaky, Bakey, Little Bit Shaky, Achey, Cakey, Awful Lot at Stakey… and Andrew.” That’s exactly the sort of joyous silliness we’ll miss when the pun-flinging pair have gone.
It was the show’s first ever Botanicals Week – bakes inspired by nature, which as a theme seemed flimsily stuck together, like a poorly made macaron. You can imagine the conversation. Junior producer: “Herbs! Citrus fruits! Flowers! They’re all things that grow! Er, will that do?” Senior producer: “Go on then, the viewers won’t mind much.” It’s true, we didn’t – especially as Berry and two of the bakers had dressed in floral prints for the occasion.
The bakers whipped up a citrus meringue pie, followed by a French fougasse (Giedroyc speculated that after tasting all seven, she would need a “fougasse-tric band”). The showstopper was a three-tiered floral cake: a fiendish test of their piping skills and anxious-peering-into-oven techniques.
Pouting PE teacher Candice Brown created an extra tier, with a cake to represent each of the four seasons. Winter was a fruitcake made to her late grandmother’s precious handwritten recipe. “Nice flavour,” twinkled Berry, judging the mood perfectly. “Well done, Gran.”
After clinging on by his floury fingernails for the past few weeks, Rav Bansal was finally eliminated – despite pandering to Berry’s love of boozy bakes by pouring tequila into his meringue pie and serving a cocktail on the side. The doyenne of dough isn’t bought that easily, Rav.
Gastro-scientist Tom Gillford was crowned Star Baker for the second time, which was harsh on Selasi Gbormittah, whose showstopper was the most spectacular. Impeccably iced with pink and white roses, it resembled a Disney princess’s wedding cake.
Bake Off is a delicate confection, each ingredient perfectly balancing the rest. With it not just changing channels but losing three quarters of its stars, I fear for its future. There’s an “Awful Lot at Stakey”.
World of Weird (Channel 4) was like tumbling down a rabbit hole and ending up in the early Nineties, a pre-internet world when we relied on shows like
Eurotrash or Tarrant on TV to bring us faintly titillating clips from around the globe. World of Weird isn’t so much an update of those formats as a wan imitation.
This opening episode of the second series comprised four films randomly bolted together. Woefully unfunny comedian Joel Dommett travelled to Australia’s Gold Coast to visit Pricasso – the world’s only artist to paint with his penis. He wore a pink stetson with matching bow tie, which was never properly explained. Pricasso recently painted a portrait of Donald Trump, which seemed apt.
Over in Texas, Blue Peter alumnus Ayo Akinwolere investigated America’s vampire community, including selfstyled “Vampire King” Michael and his “black swan” (a sympathetic donor) Blut, who let him suck her blood. We also met local rednecks Jackie and Jeff, who kept a pet capybara. It turned out, unsurprisingly, that the world’s largest rodent made a terrible house pet.
Finally, Vicky Pattison (the winner of last year’s I’m a Celebrity…) headed to Tokyo to become a Zentai, who dress in full-body Lycra and exploit their new-found anonymity by writhing around in “love hotels” with strangers.
The irritatingly squeamish presenters – Pattison was the only one who was halfway tolerable – squirmed, giggled, gurned to camera and failed to ask insightful questions. The voiceover script substituted gratuitous swearing for wit. A running time of one hour felt far longer.
This was the kind of derivative schedule-padding you’d expect to find on Channel 5 or in some far-flung corner of cable television. Channel 4 is obliged, by charter, to take risks. Airing tired nonsense like this – or, indeed, spending £75 m on Bake Off – isn’t enough.