The Great British Bake Off is boring, and if you think otherwise you’re lying to yourself

Forget the bakes, it’s this slog of a series that’s got the soggiest of bottoms


“Are you watching Bake Off tonight!?”, I’m asked with urgent excitement by the sixth person today. No I fucking well am not. And nor will I ever be. I’m not sure about you, but I actually really value my free time, and after 12 (yep, TWELVE) tedious seasons of the same bakes, the same double entendres, the same middle class energy and the same blue-eyed nemesis from the Wirral you would have more of a chance finding me settling down to put pins in my eyes than settling down to watch this twee nonsense. The Great British Bake Off is guilty of the worst crime a TV show can commit: being unspeakably boring.

The show has run its course, and the rapid decline in viewing figures back it up. We’re baked out. We’ve been in the oven too long and we are burnt to a bastard crisp.

This is exactly why everyone involved in this irritant of a show should put down the eggs and flour and leave us alone, before it’s too late.

Why the hell is it one hour and THIRTY minutes long???

Is this some kind of sickening joke? We have things to do, places to be. What can possibly be happening in that tent to stretch out the runtime to this length? Nothing interesting, I’ll tell you that for free. One hour and 30 minutes of nonsense that could have been condensed to a leaner 45 minute runtime where we’d all be happier. I would honestly rather sit and watch the bakes rise in the oven than ever have to endure those mundane baking history segments where we’d be dragged to watch and see how the Tudors would bake a loaf. This isn’t the final of The X Factor. Cut the runtime. To zero minutes, preferably.

Paul Hollywood unsettles me to my core

Great British Bake Off is boring

Don’t even breathe in my direction

This man is everything I don’t want to be stuck talking to at weddings or funerals. He is a family member I would do everything in my power to never be associated with. Smarmy to the point of vomit, an ego bigger than Mount Everest and a general demeanour that triggers my fight or flight response. In the words of the late, great Pete Burns, he’s insincere to the point of nausea. If he offered me a “Hollywood handshake”, I would choose amputation over clutching his hands. Which I know are definitely clammy.

Prue Leith is a villain

Okay, so you want me to watch a group of bakers scramble for the approval of P*ul H*llywood and Prue Leith, a woman who is a proud supporter of the Tory party (her son is an actual Conservative MP) and has the likability of a verruca. This is before we go into her tweeting support for Dominic Cummings’ pandemic Durham trip, her pro-Brexit stance and for her generally heartless approach to the housing crisis on Question Time. Can you please give me a reason as to why I’d optionally watch this duo of judges? Quickly.

When it left the BBC, it should have left our screens

Great British Bake Off is Boring

The only icon I will allow

Fair play, the show had some charm back in the day. I remember passionately following and enjoying Nadiya Hussain’s season with unbridled enthusiasm, and in my uni house there were actually tears shed at her victory. It was good TV. And The Great British Bake Off has spent the years following that season chasing that high and have never even once come close to repeating it. Any other show would be cancelled for such failure, but we’ve had to endure desperate attempts from Channel 4 to make this any good again.

They have never once succeeded.

It’s dull and we need to stop pretending otherwise

End of. As nice as it is to observe spectacular show stopping bakes, the fans of this show talk about it like they’re watching a nail biting cacophony of tension and dramatics. It is all posing nonsense. It’s British culture porn, for Americans to feast on how twee we are.  I have a theory that I believe is gospel, and that is that the key to the success of The Great British Bake Off is that people just watch it in fear of missing out. A bit like Love Island, although with Love Island we’re all watching mostly with a self-awareness that this is shit telly and we just like to be in the conversation. But the thing is, Bake Off is shitter telly. It’s all bells and whistles, formalities and tedious tropes. And no watcher of Bake Off is willing to criticise that.

My one-man campaign to destroy The Great British Bake Off in all its boring glory is hardly going to begin a revolution. My dream to see it off the airwaves remains a pipe one. But what I do hope is that we get a societal shift to watch it for what it is. It’s not the television event of the year. It’s not a national treasure. It’s just a show about people baking. And one I will never put myself through ever again.

See how boring The Great British Bake Off is for yourself by catching up on All 4.

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