The Great British Bake Off: why Crème De La Crème, the Sewing Bee, and Pottery Throw Down haven’t recreated the original's appeal

Take away some of the elements that made the Bake Off so popular, and you end up with something different
The nation's favourite: The Great British Bake Off has cracked the recipe to become a classic TV series
BBC
Ben Travis17 May 2016

Last year, over 15 million of us watched Nadiya Hussain bake some iced buns in a tent and win a trophy. It was the most-viewed piece of British TV of 2015, and it was totally brilliant.

Of course, The Great British Bake Off Series 6 finale was more than just that – it was Hussain’s triumph over her own negative self-perception, the warmth and respect of judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry, the ordinary and extraordinariness of it all that made it special.

Needless to say, the Bake Off is one of Britain’s favourite shows, growing a mammoth audience over six series, moving up from BBC Two to BBC One, and giving a makeover to a somewhat unfashionable rural pastime. In an age of immediacy, it offers a pleasingly slow-paced reprieve from the frantic pace of modern life.

It’s no wonder that Love Productions and the BBC attempted to recreate the success of the little baking show that could – but while the likes of The Great British Sewing Bee, which has just returned for a fourth series, and Bake Off: Crème De La Crème, which is about to draw to a close, have their merits, the momentous success of the main Bake Off hasn’t quite been replicated.

The basic premise of the spin-offs has remained the same, focusing on a rustic British hobby – sewing and pottery – with a series of amateur enthusiasts showing off their skills in a series of tasks. So why haven’t these shows been so popular?

If anything, they’ve served to highlight everything that’s so special about the Bake Off – there’s no one thing that makes it what it is, it’s a careful recipe of ingredients that make up a moreish, old-fashioned British treat, like a classic Victoria sponge.

But if you take away the sugar from a cake mix, it becomes a batter – which is great, but not the same; and when you take away some of the things that make the Bake Off so brilliant, it creates something that’s fine, but… different.

The Great British Sewing Bee 2016: contestants

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Take the Great British Sewing Bee – like the Bake Off, it has a ‘try it yourself’ appeal that allows enthusiasts to get in on the craze, a hilarious presenter in Claudia Winkleman, and some engaging judges in Esme Young and Patrick Grant.

What’s lacking is the filthiness – both the messiness of the sticky dough and the endless puns – and the dramatic nature of the activity itself. When the Bake Off contestants put their creations in the oven there’s no knowing how they’ll come out. Will they be cooked in the middle? Will they fall apart? Will anyone take someone’s frozen dessert out of the freezer to melt on the countertop?

Then there’s The Great Pottery Throw Down, with a slightly more left-field pastime. The excitement is there in the kilning process, and the end results have a visual wow-factor with the transformation from drab slabs of clay to colourful creations. And the puns? Oh god, the puns. Handles, cracks, rims – it's all there for the taking.

Other elements aren’t right though – there’s the bizarre judge Keith Brymer Jones who always dissolves into tears, which feels as far away from Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry as it was possible to be.

Pottery isn’t something you can quickly pick up, either – while baking and sewing are accessible, very few people can get their potter’s wheel and kiln out of the cupboard at the weekend to give it a go.

Bake Off: Creme de la Creme 2016

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If any Bake Off spin-off had the best chance of succeeding, it was Crème De La Crème – which even has its parent series in its full title. Instead it got the most crucial element wrong: the fun.

The show was Bake Off by name, but not by nature – featuring professional pastry chefs, a sky-high difficulty level, and judges who often came across as simply mean. One week a team had a disaster when their sugar-spun swan collapsed – and while the judges said they wouldn’t hold it against them, they didn’t need to because they savaged the rest of the creation anyway.

As a pastry-based variation on MasterChef, with its “cooking doesn’t get tougher than this” mantra, it might have flown – but it felt miles away from the cuddliness of the Bake Off.

All of which is to say that The Great British Bake Off increasingly seems like the perfect show – it’s exciting, it’s funny, it’s got puns, and grand old cakes, and Mel and Sue, and Paul and Mary, and frolicking lambs, and lions made of bread. Some recipes are home favourites for a reason.

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