The Great British Bake Off showrunner knows you didn't like that last season as much

Many fans of the sweet baking competition have started to sour on the comfort watch in recent years

By Katie Chow  |  February 17, 2023 | 5:05pm
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The Great British Bake Off showrunner knows you didn't like that last season as much
Great British Bake Off Graphic: Mark Bourdillon/Netflix

If you weren’t so sweet on the last season of Great British Bake Off—or Great British Baking Show, as it’s called in the U.S.—you’re not alone. Love Productions head and executive producer Richard McKerrow recently opened up about the criticism the baking competition received for its 2022 installment.

“I’d be the first to hold up our hands and say that I feel that the last series was not our strongest,” McKerrow tells The Media Podcast (via Deadline). “We had two series which we had to film during COVID, the team here just went to enormous effort and enormous sacrifice to get that filming done in a bubble. We’re having lots of conversations, I think you have to do that with a series that has been going to season 14.”

Of course, this has been a long time coming for some viewers. After seven seasons, Great British Bake Off parted ways with the BBC after the 2016 competition, instead broadcasting on Channel 4 in the U.K. The change meant losing judge Mary Berry and hosts Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who guided much of the show’s tone. Moving forward, only judge Paul Hollywood remained from the old guard.

“When we left the BBC, the outcry was such that it makes you think, ‘Bake Off belongs to the people, it doesn’t belong to Love Productions,’” the chief executive adds. “So you have to take very, very, very good care of it, so when people are criticizing either the challenges have become too complicated or whatever, you know, that’s something we take seriously and we try to do something about it.”

By “or whatever,” McKerrow presumably means the numerous objections to season 13's Mexican-themed episode, which involved hosts Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding donning deeply ill-advised stereotypical costumes to introduce a taco challenge. It followed a 2020 installment that was similarly dubiously dedicated to Japanese cuisine.

McKerrow also teased that Great British Bake Off is gearing up to film its next season starting in April and that a replacement for departing host Lucas will be confirmed in the coming weeks. Only time will tell if the new and improved recipe comes out with a soggy bottom.

 
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