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The Great British Bake Off is going back to basics — and ditching its “national themes” — a year after angering viewers with a disastrous “Mexican Week” episode.
“We didn’t want to offend anyone but the world has changed and the joke fell flat, executive producer Kieran Smith told The Guardian in an interview about the upcoming 14th season. “We’re not doing any national themes this year.”
In Season 13’s “Mexican Week,” host Noel Fielding and then-host Matt Lucas donned sombreros and ponchos and used cringe-worthy wordplay to introduce the theme. Bakers also mispronounced “pico de gallo” and peeled avocados like potatoes, per Entertainment Weekly.
A “Japanese Week” two seasons prior also sparked controversy, as Lucas called katsu curry “cat poo curry” and bakers used Indian and Chinese flavors in their creations. One contestant even shaped her steamed buns, a delicacy associated more with China than Japan, to resemble panda bears, a species native to China and not Japan, as Insider recapped.
“The show has slowly moved away from regional specialties and technique-centered challenges, from focusing on, say, the beauty of lamination, hot-water crusts and steamed puddings,” critic Tejal Rao wrote for The New York Times last year. “It has grown to fit the exact, most clichéd limits of its form — countries as themes, cuisines as costumes, identities as performances.”
Recent seasons ofThe Great British Bake Off have also come under fire for challenges that involve cooking more than baking, with bakers tasked with whipping up tacos, pizza, and spring rolls.
“I hold my hands up to the cooking complaint and the theme weeks,” Smith told The Guardian.
And so, The Great British Bake Off — a Channel 4 series that streams on Netflix as The Great British Baking Show in the U.S. — is going “very traditional” for its upcoming 14th season, Smith explained. “We’re doing all the regular weeks: Cakes, Biscuits, Bread, Patisserie, Chocolate, plus Party Cakes is a new theme. No spoilers, but it features challenges I think viewers will love.”
The Great British Bake Off, Season 14, TBD, Netflix
