The Great American Baking Show, a pitiful rip-off of the Great British Baking Show. Totally over produced, too many commercials (on network TV yet, OY!), sidekicks who are buffoons, everything putrid you would expect from an American recreation of something that was well done across the pond. Christ.
It’s not a rip-off, it’s a licenced regional variant, this happens all the time with reality shows (we even have a South African version of this) - and the original is The Great British Bake Off (which apparently is a Pillsbury trademark in the US, hence the renaming in the US)
Well, the superior original is probably dead as well. The producers chased the money to Channel 4, where it will probably have all the same problems regarding commercials and overproduction, and failed to lock down all the good talent. At this point they have Paul Hollywood and a tent.
So they’ve got themselves the rights to a large, fairly boring structure that bring little in the way of emotional impact and is not intrinsic to the show itself…
…
…
and a tent!
I thank you, I’m here all week…
The original show, with Mary Berry, Paul Hollywood, Mel and Sue, is great, though. Just bringing Mary Berry to the US does not do it.
And the same thing is true of other American adaptions of British reality shows. The original Kitchen Nightmares episodes are great, while the American episodes are not as interesting. And The F Word is better than Hell’s Kitchen.
We’re enjoying it. Now, the Christmas version is an abject failure, IMO. They’re using professional bakers (who don’t seem all that good at their craft) in the competition with - I think - a $50,000 prize, which just makes it seem tawdry. Compare that to the British version, where after all those weeks of work and stress the winner got. . . . . .a cake stand!
I think they filmed the currently-airing US series in England, though. Probably over the summer, maybe just after the last UK series was filmed, given the comments about the heat. Makes all the fake Christmassy bullshit even faker.
Sorry Dopers. This show sucks weasels nutz. This carnival act could only rise in my esteem if the final episode was arbitrated by Donald Trump who would then be thrown into a pit of rotting buffalo turds infested with Phyllis Schlafly lookalikes.
That’s mean. What have you got against buffalo turds?
I would pay to see that! Especially if the schlafly lookalikes killed and ate him.
Seriously, we watched it. It wasn’t as bad as a lot of those merikan baking competitions cough cupcake wars cough, but the original British version has something that American producers don’t seem to comprehend; restraint.
We have the same problem in Australia. Too much excitement. Too much drama.
You just knew whenever Mel or Sue were having the deep heart-to-heart chat with a contestant who had stuffed up, or run out of time, or used cement instead of sugar, the underlying tone was always ‘You do know, this show is just about cooking, right?’
They spun off a GBBO professionals version in the UK (much like Masterchef did) which was interesting. Teams of three bakers, doing things like trying to make 300 identical little pastries. I think the name actually hurt the series, as the entire thing was just so much different in tone and scope that it turned a lot of people off.
The British show did three Christmas episodes with Mary and Paul doing the baking. They are charming, and showed what talented people they are.
You don’t think the sidekicks on GBBS are buffoons? Intentionally and (usually) humorously so, but buffoons nonetheless.
Mel and Sue are comedic but I wouldn’t describe them as buffoons. And what little I’ve seen of the US version amps up the drama and loses the charm of the original show. (For one thing, everyone on the British show is so nice to each other and the diversity in the contestants speaks to the diversity in the UK. There’s the grandmother who was in the Womens’ Institute for decades, but there’s also the eighteen-year-old student, or the Asian mother from Luton (who ended up winning it all).
I think there’s a little conflation here between The Great American Baking Show (with hosts Nia Vardalos and her hubby) and the unrelated Holiday Baking Championship on Food Network.
At any rate, I also don’t like The Great American Baking Show as much as the original. The hosts try WAY TOO HARD to be likable and amusing and for whatever reason it doesn’t work like it does for Mel and Sue. But… it’s still a pleasant show, particularly where American reality programming is concerned. It still has no $$ prize, still has Mary, still has minimal drama, and I watch it every week.