How 'The Great British Baking Show' righted the ship

Plus: Bad Bunny, nudity, and very long movies

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when Taylor Swift got praise she might not have expected. It was the week when Halloween costumes and labor unrest crossed paths. And it was the week when Netflix raised prices ... again. (Lots more at the news quiz.) Let's get to it. How The Great British Baking Show righted the ship I think last season of The Great British Baking Show was the first one I didn't gobble up (no pun intended) the minute the episodes dropped. I had grown weary of the hosting team of Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas, frustrated with overly complicated bakes that were almost impossible to execute well, and dismayed at repeated and increasingly obnoxious takes on "ethnic" food weeks that didn't even seem to represent good-faith efforts to get things right. What a relief to be looking forward to episodes arriving on Netflix on Friday mornings again. The show has had a long and bumpy ride; I am not alone in believing that the best and purest version will always be the first one, the public television one, with Mary Berry alongside Paul Hollywood, and with Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins hosting. But the era that followed, with Prue Leith taking Mary's place and Noel Fielding hosting with Sandi Toksvig, had its charms, too. Then Sandi left, and she was replaced by Matt Lucas, who was much too close to being another Noel, a look-at-me presence who seemed less interested in the contestants than in doing bits and being the center of attention. You can do bits on this show -- that's why they hire comedians! -- but you have to care about the contestants first. Things got wonky. Mark Bourdillon/Love Productions/Channel 4 Lucas is gone now, replaced by Alison Hammond, a boisterous but generous companion to Fielding who has helped the show restore its balance. She's silly but not distracting. She and Noel don't interrupt the flow to do shtick the way he did with Lucas. Production has knocked off the convoluted challenges and gone back to ones the bakers can do well. This week's showstopper, for instance, is a cake inside any sort of chocolate box you want to make. Is making a chocolate box fancy? Sure! Is it impossible, or does it result in nothing but a series of failures? No. And, yes, they've made the wise decision to stop the "national weeks" that were increasingly embarrassing for everyone involved. There are two ways a show, particularly a competition show, can try to assure itself a long life. One is to go the Survivor route of becoming ever more complicated, introducing new twists and turns and producer interventions that keep anybody from figuring out a reliable strategy, lest the outcome become predictable. It's hard to argue with a show that's on its 45th season when it comes to sticking around, but the game itself is much less smart and skilled than it once was, and as it eats its own tail by casting Survivor superfans who proceed to spend their time on the show talking about how much they love the show, it's less and less compelling. The other way is to do what Bake-Off (yes, yes, in the U.S. we technically call it The Great British Baking Show, but it's Bake-Off in our hearts) is currently doing. You trust your format, you concentrate on good casting, you lean on your fundamentals -- in short, you calm the thing down. Bake-Off has always been soothing; that's its nature. It doesn't need to be brand-new every time, with things you've never seen before. One technical challenge this season was custard creams, perhaps unfamiliar to many Americans but a basic and very popular sandwich cookie in the UK. It looks a lot like a golden Oreo, though it's rectangular and I'm pretty sure the texture is different. Getting it right comes down to details and technique. It's not flashy; fussing over the execution is for nerds, in the best way. There's a lesson here for other shows: If your format is a good idea, you don't have to keep complicating it. The human beings and the happenings will keep it fresh. And when you do that, the hosts can stay out of the way, because they're not the main event. They never were. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend I enjoy an occasional session of virtual urban planning myself, so I enjoyed this Kristen Kagei review of the Cities: Skylines sequel. You may have been reading about the success on Max of the British dating show Naked Attraction, where everybody ... gets naked. I want you to understand: in the simple words of PCHH producer Liz Metzger when she was trying to explain the show to our team, "You see everything." There is no blurring, there are close-ups, you see everything. (This trailer is censored, but the actual show is not.) This show has been around overseas since 2016, but its arrival recently in the U.S. has gotten everybody kind of riled up. Why am I telling you about this? Because we're going to talk about it on PCHH in a while, and honestly, I think it's kind of interesting! It's obviously not for everybody, and at first, if you're mostly used to American dating shows, it sure is bracing. But ... we'll talk about it. (Also, NPR's Neda Ulaby has a piece about "nudity creep," which includes the indelible phrase, "People will never get tired of nudity.") As I write this, it's October 20. And when do the Hallmark Christmas movies start? Well, they start tonight. Is this bizarre? Yes. But I don't make the news, I just pass it on to you. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Coachella Glen and I sat down to talk about three great movies over three hours. (And people say we complain everything is too long!) Glen, Bob Mondello, and Bedatri D. Choudhury talked about the Palme d'Or winner Anatomy of a Fall. Stephen, Anamaria Artemisa Sayre and Isabella Gomez Sarmiento had a discussion about Bad Bunny, whose new album is out. And Glen, Aisha, Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Monica Castillo dug into Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon. What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Monica Castillo: Bad Bunny’s new album, Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana Sam Yellowhorse Kesler: Slotherhouse, streaming on Hulu Aisha Harris: Birth/Rebirth, available on VOD Glen Weldon: Taskmaster, streaming on YouTube Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Looking for more great content? Check out all of our newsletter offerings — including Music, Books, Daily News and more! You received this message because you're subscribed to Pop Culture Happy Hour emails. This email was sent by National Public Radio, Inc., 1111 North Capitol Street NE, Washington, DC 20002 Unsubscribe  |  Privacy Policy