Oh yes, Foxes Afloat is wonderful.
I’d also recommend Taskmaster. A very silly show about clever people doing dumb challenges.
They’re all trying out for not-too-much-lookalikes over here. There’s been a sewing bee, a pottery throwdown, something on model railway layouts, make-up, hairdressing, and now (I’m not kidding) a dog-grooming competition called Pooch Perfect.
I’ve been watching Taskmaster for about the past year, via the official YouTube channel, which posts an episode each week. Each series is ten episodes, with three or four challenges in each, and five competitors each. Greg Davies is the presenter and “taskmaster” while Alex Horne is his assistant, but in reality Alex Horne is in charge. The challenges are sometimes silly but require a bit of creativity.
(I’d like to see an American adaptation but apparently previous attempts failed.)
My wife is all about the Baking Show and we’ve been watching past seasons of Sewing Bee so I’m takin’ notes over here…
Just noticed a new one, on Channel 4 here: a group of people take it in turns to be the nude model in a life class. They’ve called it Drawers Off (and I won’t get into the dating show called Naked Attraction)
Grand Designs is worthwhile if you are into house design, DIY and architecture (Its on Netflix). Basically they follow a family with a house building project then see the course of the project over the years it takes to actually come to fruition. Typically something completely over-ambitious that runs years over time and massively over budget, but ends up looking pretty impressive.
I became addicted to Taskmaster! I love that show! ( Do not attempt watching american version, it will ruin the name Taskmaster)
And always involves stomping around in a lot of mud and torrential rain while the project gets paused for several months because they haven’t got the roof on before winter. Meanwhile, they’re living in a caravan with two kids, two dogs and the wife is pregnant.
Has anyone mentioned Location Location Location? It’s basically a house hunting show, but the presenters Kirsty and Phil are, for a change, professional real estate agents who really know their stuff, are very opinionated and also very entertaining (they worked together before their TV careers and there’s lots of banter).
It’s so popular, it’s been going for 20 years with the same presenters.
Ah yes, Phil the Hunk and Kirstie “Knock-Through” Allsopp.
Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home show was an interesting little short series. Had a feel a little like James May’s Toy Stories, which I also like.
Since we’re huge fans of GBBO, and huge fans of Derry Girls, that episode was especially good. (We keep recommending Derry Girls to everyone, and haven’t found any takers yet. It’s excellent.)
Thank you for this. Yeah, Paul Hollywood is totally a dick. I enjoy watching his other show, City Bakes, just to see him flail about awkwardly without the foil of scared contestants he can intimidate. Ah well, all in good fun I suppose.
I’m not sure how available they are in the US, but they’re on Sky Arts in the UK, so might be somewhere else too given Sky’s reach: Portrait Artist of the Year and Landscape Artist of the Year.
For us one of the main joys is betting on how unlikely it is that our favourite will win that week: for Landscape Artist, we’re about 100% for them not going for the one we’d have chosen.
I loved the San Francisco one where he was so clearly outclassed by the bakers that he literally got the wind knocked out of him. And in Paris when he said the pastries were so amazing and the lady said so matter-of-factly “They are French.” ROFL!
I can’t say enough about “TaskMaster.” It’s just an absolute crying belly laugh every time. It got me through the Trump years.
There are on youtube a few episodes of the South African version of bake-off. While the baking is no where near up to the style of the British version, I loved the interaction in the same way as the British show. The judge on the Irish show was an absolute arsehole and I was desperately disappointed because I just couldn’t tolerate the man. I’ll have to go look for the Canadian one.
I haven’t seen anybody mention “Crazy Delicious” on Netflix. It’s a whole lot of fun and also very upbeat.
At the risk of derailing the thread into the “smutty jokes in sitcoms” thread, a gay comedian on the celebrity version of Bake-Off caught Paul Hollywood out when they had to make some shortbread. Sampling it, PH said “Nice crack”. “Thank you” came the comeback, “but what about the shortbread?”
Not a competition show, but I’d recommend any of the Ruth Goodman series (available here on Amazon Prime) like Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm…Ruth and her team live the lives of people from their target era. Fascinating to me. Life was very much harder in those past days
Ruth Goodman’s done a number of similar “life re-enactment” programmes, as has Alec Langlands her co-presenter in the farm series.
Another that springs to mind was a documentary about about Castle Guédelon.
On another tack, how about programmes following presenters on country walks? Julia Bradbury’s done loads of them, but she’s not the only one.
Britbox has:
This Farming Life
Footloose in the Cotswolds
Gardeners’ World
British Railways
Fantasy Homes by the Sea
Countryfile
and many more
Not to mention the British version of Antiques Roadshow.