Photo: Channel 4
Greetings and welcome back to The Great British Copyright Infringement. The wonderful thing about this show is that it is classic, timeless, and unanchored by time but very obviously in a space. (That space is the tent and also whatever planet Noel is from.) I was a little saddened by the Barbie-themed opening sketch. I don’t like them tying the show too closely to pop culture, especially when Barbie was the vibe of summer 2023. Everyone, including Kamala Harris, knows that summer 2024 was Brat Summer. We didn’t need a hot pink tent; we needed a neon green one.
The other wild thing about life in the tent is that, for the first time, people are complaining about how cold it is. Usually, they’re all winging that their chocolate is melting or their jams won’t set because of the heat. Not this year. I joke that the U.K. is 50 degrees and raining every day from October to March. It’s not much of a joke because it’s true. This year, it was 50 degrees, and it rained from October until June. Summer didn’t properly start until July this year. The weather was so bad that even English people were complaining about it. Do you know how bad something has to be for an English person to complain? And do you know how bad the weather has to be for these waterlogged people to pipe up about it? Yeah, it was that bad, so have a bit of sympathy for our bakers.
Speaking of which, we get to go around and meet them all during the signature challenge, which is to make an elevated version of their signature loaf cake. I love this new Baking Show where the concepts are down to earth, no one has to have a degree in architecture to complete the brief, and we’re back to basics in the best way.
The first one is Illiyin from Norfolk, who is making a cinnamon-roll cake. Will it or will it not get out of the pan safely? This was a good week, so you know it did! Next is Gill, pronounced Jill, and she loves to play boules (which is what English people call bocce) with her mother; she’s making a chocolate-and-orange loaf because the only thing the English love more than not having screen windows for some reason is a chocolate-and-orange flavor combination.
John is from the West Midlands, just like Allison. They are called Brummies, which comes from the old English name of Birmingham. Every time I meet someone from Birmingham, I say, “I’ve never been!” and to a person, they reply, “Don’t.” John, whose eyes are so blue Paul Hollywood says he will never make him star baker, is making a chocolate-cherry loaf. Andy, who is this year’s working-class man with a pencil behind his ear, is from Essex because, as we all know, that is the only way.
Mike is a gay farmer, and I need to know everything about his life and I will probably follow him on Instagram because every gay in the U.K. already follows that one hot gay farmer, so we should all follow the less hot ones who can also bake, right? Mike uses eggs from his farm to make lemon-and-linseed loaf. Georgie is a yummy mummy from the Welsh countryside, and though she is not a farmer, she does have a lot of animals, including a chicken named Fanny. In the U.K., “fanny” is a cute way of saying vagina. It’s like if she lived in Nebraska and had a chicken named Vajayjay. Georgie is working on a chocolate marble loaf that looks sure to be disgusting.
Sumayah is this year’s precocious 18-year-old who is way better at baking than she should be. She’s also making a loaf with halwa, a carrot-based sweet, in the middle. I feel like she’s already made the final three. Next up is Jeff, who you can tell is American because he’s not Geoff. I believe that this is the first American ever on the show, which makes me a little sad that it’s not me. He was born in the Bronx and now lives in Yorkshire, which is like the Bronx of England. It’s up north, it’s a little rough, and they have a crazy accent. Basically the same place. And Yorkshire is named for York, and the Bronx is in New York, and that, my friends, is how colonialism works. Jeff is making a raspberry, lemon, and almond sponge, and I’m a little disappointed he’s not making a Betty Crocker pound cake from a box. That’s the American way.
Nellie is from Slovakia. She’s making a coconut loaf cake, and she’s making her love for Noel her whole personality. I would have gone with Allison, personally, but she and John are already sitting around talking about the Aston Villa squad so I guess she’s taken. Dylan is this year’s certified hottie, and I didn’t hear anything he said because I was staring into his eyes and thinking about how much hotter he’d be without the man bun. Then they cut away to him at home in Buckinghamshire saying he’s a skateboarder, but all we do is watch him fall. It is the meanest Baking Show has ever been, and I am here for it. I don’t remember what Dylan is making because I was too busy thinking about the buns I want him to put in my oven.
Christiaan with two A’s is Dutch, which I believe means he only pays for himself on dates. He’s making some kind of apple cake with miso in it and it sounds disgusting, so he’s not going to get an A+ from me. Finally, we meet Hazel, this year’s bless-her-heart-she’s-71-and-will-be-gone-by-episode-three contestant. I also love that the only humans currently named Hazel are pensioners from Kent and babies born to hipster parents in Brooklyn.
When Paul and Prue come around and inspect all the loaves (should we call this spreading the loaf around?), Christiaan’s is just as bad as I thought. Not only did Paul hate the miso, it was also overbaked. Also doing terribly was our countryman Andy, whose loaf was messier than Paul Hollywood’s divorce, and Georgie, whose loaf looked like someone pinched it. Yeah, it looked like a turd. Sorry, Georgie. The stars of this first round are Nelly, whose coconut loaf looks like a monochrome outfit from The Row, Sumayah, whose halwa fully wows everyone, and Iliyin, whose perfect cinnamon-roll loaf earns her a handshake. A handshake? In the first episode? Are we back to the days when Paul was giving them out like free matchbooks at the bar?
The technical challenge is a first. The bakers have to eat a mini Battenberg and then replicate it based on taste without a recipe. I don’t think they even need to make the bakers taste these because everyone in England knows what they are: Mr Kiplings, which is like the Little Debbie of the U.K., makes an excellent one. It’s a checkerboard sponge with buttercream and apricot jam wrapped in marzipan. These are also all elements that the bakers should know how to bake without a recipe, so I think this fits perfectly: something that is both challenging and attainable. I would say that is like having sex with me, but there is nothing at all challenging about that. I give it out like Paul Hollywood gives out handshakes these days.
At the bottom (no I am not still talking about my sex life) is Mike, Hazel, and the formerly fantastic Sumayah. At the top are John and both Christiaan and Georgie, redeeming themselves from their horrible loaves. Jeff had to leave the tent because he wasn’t feeling well and will be back next week. Everyone who has ever watched a season of this show now knows that no one will be going home this week ’cause that’s how they roll.
Usually, I would say I hate this, because why watch an episode without an elimination? It’s like spinning your wheels and getting nowhere. But I don’t mind if no one goes home the first episode, something they do regularly on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Everyone worked really hard to get here; give us two episodes to get to know them before someone gets the boot. Also, this way they can just randomly kick off two people during an upcoming episode and we’ll be shocked.
The showstopper is now a regular feature on the show: Make an illusion cake. It’s like Is This Cake, but we all know it’s cake because it’s a baking show. Everyone seems to be doing shockingly well, including my lover Dylan, who is making a sesame-flavored Canopic jar, which is a very odd choice but I will not question him because we are deeply in one-sided love. The only person who is a mess is Georgie, who is making a real-life version of her chicken Fanny. Her cake looks kind of like an old boot with a pencil for a beak. She also made 300 individual feathers to go on her, and that is best part of the whole bird. When she presents her creation, Allison watches the judges try the lemon curd and elderflower-buttercream cake and then asks, “How does Fanny taste?” and I can’t believe that this show is working so blue! I also love it. Loving Allison is now my entire personality.
Mike makes a stack of books that look absolutely amazing, and they’re all separate so the judges can pick them up and open the covers. That’s pretty rad. They also love the chocolate cake and butterscotch frosting even though I think butterscotch tastes like fanny. Andy makes an excellent-looking overnight bag and it’s not even leath-ah. (I said that last bit in my Joan Cusack Working Girl accent.)
Georgie somehow ends up in the race to be Star Baker along with Sumayah, who made a cake model of her duck Pato, which is Spanish for duck. I mean, this thing looked like a plastic model. This could have been on Is It Cake and I would have been like, “Do not kill that adorable duck.” John is also in contention for Star Baker because he has good genes that gave him blue eyes and good jeans made out of cake. John is awarded Star Baker, and I am very happy for him and hope he dresses as Paul Hollywood for Halloween.
In the bottom are Hazel, who made a cake handbag that she carried by the strap to the judges table and it was cool as shit but the cake looked like it was made out of sponges used to clean a prison shower for 20 years. Christiaan’s sewing machine looked super-realistic and could even be threaded, but inside it was drier than an AA meeting in Salt Lake City. They would have been in danger of going home, but once again, an American saved all of these British people’s asses. It’s just like WWII but with way more butter. You’re all welcome. USA. USA. USA.
