I was very slow to start watching the original Great British Bake Off, but was soon a big fan of the mix of silly humour and absence of manufactured drama and spitefulness.
I started watching the Great Australian Bake Off after running out of old GBBOs; I was disappointed that Season 1 of the GABO chose to emulate the over-the-top drama and manufactured controversies that are standard in pretty much every other show of this type - it seems the producers decided to ditch the very things that made the original British Bake Off such a success.
Fortunately everything changed for seasons 2 and 3 - the entirely new judging and presenting teams were a massive improvement, and the whole of these 2 seasons managed to combine the charm of the British original with a distinctively Australian flavour.
I'm still watching Season 4 but am disinclined to even bother finishing it - while the presenters and judges are largely the same, it appears that whoever is producing it urged the contestants to pick a personal characteristic and just keep on pushing it forward at every opportunity - we have the contestant who is a scientist - she approaches everything from a SCIENCE perspective, did you hear? SCIENCE, we have the lol random dancing dentist, we have the Big Macho Beardy Bear guy who is really a gentle giant, we have incredibly easily amused woman who gurns her way through every minor excitement and so on.
It's like they have all been instructed to turn their personal characteristics up 1000% and make themselves forcibly memorable.
I checked and there was a new producer for this season who has previously worked on similar US show, so I strongly suspect what we have here is a bad case of new broom syndrome.
Hopefully things will return to normal if there is a Season 5.
I started watching the Great Australian Bake Off after running out of old GBBOs; I was disappointed that Season 1 of the GABO chose to emulate the over-the-top drama and manufactured controversies that are standard in pretty much every other show of this type - it seems the producers decided to ditch the very things that made the original British Bake Off such a success.
Fortunately everything changed for seasons 2 and 3 - the entirely new judging and presenting teams were a massive improvement, and the whole of these 2 seasons managed to combine the charm of the British original with a distinctively Australian flavour.
I'm still watching Season 4 but am disinclined to even bother finishing it - while the presenters and judges are largely the same, it appears that whoever is producing it urged the contestants to pick a personal characteristic and just keep on pushing it forward at every opportunity - we have the contestant who is a scientist - she approaches everything from a SCIENCE perspective, did you hear? SCIENCE, we have the lol random dancing dentist, we have the Big Macho Beardy Bear guy who is really a gentle giant, we have incredibly easily amused woman who gurns her way through every minor excitement and so on.
It's like they have all been instructed to turn their personal characteristics up 1000% and make themselves forcibly memorable.
I checked and there was a new producer for this season who has previously worked on similar US show, so I strongly suspect what we have here is a bad case of new broom syndrome.
Hopefully things will return to normal if there is a Season 5.