From Gordon Ramsay to James Corden, predicting which Brits will make a splash in Hollywood has long been a fool’s errand – even in the Netflix era. After all, what’s the latest British export to conquer the greatest entertainment market on earth? The Great British Bake Off.
Well, almost. Like Cary Grant (born in Bristol as Archibald Leach), our humble baking show needed a slight rebrand ahead of its launch stateside. Instead the show made its debut, in 2014, under a slightly different name: The Great British Baking Show. After becoming a ratings hit, the competition was then snapped up by a much bigger name altogether: Netflix.
Within three years, the Baking Show had gone stratospheric: finally earning its place, last year, as one of the most streamed shows in America. Did the 2020 home-baking fixation play a part? Perhaps. But what an achievement nonetheless. No wonder, then, Netflix continues to plunder the BBC’s back catalogue, uploading old seasons of the Bake Off under the rather pretentious tagline ‘The Beginnings’.
‘I like how inoffensive it is,’ says an American friend of mine – a high-earner for a K-street law firm – of the Bake Off.
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