British viewers of The Great British Bake Off are in a tizzy. The beloved baking competition, whose Season 7 premiere was watched by nearly half of British television viewers, is crumbling like a piece of stale shortbread.
Earlier this month, future seasons of the show were sold by its producer, Love Productions, to Britain's Channel 4, a rival to the commercial-free BBC. The price was a reported 99 million pounds for three years, triple the BBC's offer to keep it.
That was a blow to Britain's public television network, which has found itself unable to compete with the millions that independent channels are spending to get programming like Downton Abbey that in another era might have been BBC bound.
Three of the show's hosts -- revered cookbook author Mary Berry, and co-hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc -- said they would not go with the show to Channel 4. The fourth host, swarthy celebrity chef Paul Hollywood, signed a contract to remain part of the Great British Bake Off (or GBBO as it's known for short).
Said Berry, "My decision to stay with the BBC is out of loyalty to them, as they have nurtured me, and the show, that was a unique and brilliant format from day one."
The departures earned their own hashtag -- #Breadxit -- and raised fears that Berry might choose to retire.
But now, it looks like the three women will be part of a rival show to GBBO that the BBC plans to produce. What's more, that show might even get on the air sooner that a new version of GBBO, according to The Mirror.
Anything that features Berry is bound to attract viewers. After all, she helped convince Brits after World War II that electric stoves were safe. The 81-year-old baking expert is Britain's equivalent of Julia Child, adored on the show for her pointed yet kind criticism (she recently described a sloppy icing job as "a bit casual").
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The new show may not be able to copy GBBO, which follows a simple three-part formula. Each week, the bakers, who must audition for the program, must produce three different baked items.
They take part in the signature challenge, in which they make their own variation on a type of baked good; the technical challenge, where they each follow the same recipe; and a showstopper, in which they try to outdo each other making spectacular creations like cookies served in an edible cookie jar.
While GBBO has yet to create as big an audience in the States as it has at home, it is growing in popularity on PBS stations and on
American viewers have only gotten to see two out of the show's seven seasons, and here it's called The Great British Baking Show, since Pillsbury has dibs on the term "bakeoff." Many PBS stations just finished airing their second season, which was actually GBBO's sixth season.
A PBS spokeswoman told The Hollywood Reporter that the sixth season, or Season Two in the U.S., was the most-streamed PBS show during summer, 2016.
As with Downton Abbey, crafty American GBBO fans have found ways to view episodes from the current season, and have been reveling in the results of Biscuit Week, Cake Week and the various showstoppers.
Many of them were in despair this past week when -- SPOILER ALERT -- an elderly contestant named Val was eliminated from the show. Val's dismissal generated the sort of outrage that erupted when Matthew Crawley, heir to the Downton title, died in that show's Christmas special at the end of Season 3.
This seventh season of GBBO will likely be the last aired by PBS, unless it makes a new agreement with Channel 4 for its seasons of the show. That gives public television stations time to plan for the end of the show in its current form.
But, there's a likelihood that PBS will make a deal with the BBC for the new show starring the three holdovers, given that GBBO attracts a similar audience to the avid one that watched Downton.
Meanwhile, Berry will return to American TV this holiday season. ABC renewed The Great Holiday Baking Show, a limited edition program that attracted 5 million viewers during its first edition last year, even though the quality of baking on the show hardly compared with that on GBBO.
So, American fans should keep watch on the developments across the pond. Even if Mel and Sue aren't allow to say, "ready, set, bake!" under the new format, GBBO fans will hear it in their hearts when the stars return to the small screen.
