Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Review: A Sweet Take on British Identity Returns to PBS

The 12 contestants in the third season of “The Great British Baking Show” includes participants of Lithuanian, Filipino and Bangladeshi heritage.Credit...Mark Bourdillion/Love Productions

I had not expected watching “The Great British Baking Show” to be a politically freighted experience. But that was before “Brexit.”

The vote by Britons to leave the European Union was, among other things, part of an argument over national identity: how much of the outside to let in, what (and, sometimes with ugly overtones, who) defines Britishness in a global age.

“The Great British Baking Show” (titled “The Great British Bake Off” in Britain), which returns Friday on PBS, is hardly a political program. But it engages similar ideas in its own meringue-light way.

In structure, this is a typical cooking competition, in which a dozen bakers execute tall challenges and face weekly eliminations. (The current season — which is the third to air in the United States but was the sixth in Britain — has already finished on the BBC, so beware online spoilers.)

There’s a cheerful town-fair vibe: no trash talk; the occasional low-key drama over a runny custard; plenty of saucy puns from the hosts, Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc. (Referencing the distinctive fissure on a Madeira cake: “Bakers, time to reveal your cracks!”)

The confections tower like Nelson’s Column; the whipped cream mounds up like fog on the heath. For an airy, refreshing summer diversion, you need no more.

Image
From left, the judges Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry with the show’s hosts, Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc.Credit...Mark Bourdillion/Love Productions

What distinguishes the show is how national identity is baked into the concept. It presents a firm, if tongue in cheek, notion of Britishness as something you can feel and taste, but something that is evolving as well.

The challenges are held under a tent, against a backdrop of pastoral green, little Union Jack pennants bordering the work area. There’s a great deal of attention to what constitutes a “proper” British dessert. These pronouncements are often handed down, in a voice of pure English cream, by the delightfully authoritative judge Mary Berry (working together with the celebrity baker Paul Hollywood).

But the amateurs turning out the tarts make a diverse picture of modern Britain — including contestants of Lithuanian, Filipino and Bangladeshi heritage — the various concoctions incorporating jackfruit and cilantro into the traditional biscuits and soda breads.

Food is heritage, but the world comes in through the kitchen window. The “English” classics featured in the challenges are replete with international connections (Black Forest gâteau) and flavored with the fruits of empire (nutmeg, clove, pepper).

So the show’s notion of what it means to be a great British baker is less about nostalgia than synthesis. Kitchen citizenship means being able to reproduce the country’s pastry patrimony and recognize its formal requirements. But you also need to advance it, putting something of yourself into it.

The tension between classicism and creativity is part of nearly any cooking show — you don’t win with boring. But here, it’s also about the interpretation of culture, the idea of nationhood as something that requires both continuity and growth.

Nadiya Hussain, a Luton-born Muslim contestant who wears a hijab, seems to describe this idea as she stirs cardamom into her Madeira cake batter in the first episode. Too much of the spice tastes “medicinal,” she says; too little, and you don’t get the flavor. “It’s finding a balance,” she says.

As it is with Britain, so is it with “The Great British Baking Show.” Even as the country’s politics turn inward, it continues to stir in the spice.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section C, Page 2 of the New York edition with the headline: A Sweet Take on British Identity. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT