This year’s Bake-Off is super-sweet—Nelly!—but the judges are a wee bit stale

Last year, its 14th season, The Great British Bake-Off was finally fun and fresh again.

This year, season 15—i.e. Netflix collection 12 of The Great British Baking Show, because we can’t have the same name or even the same numbers—is even better, even though the crust is getting stale on our judges.

It’s the most fun I’ve had watching the series in years, though in the first episode, I wouldn’t have predicted that.

Alison Hammond hugs Jeff, GBBO’s first American contestant, as he exits the competition

The season got off to an inauspicious start, from that Barbie movie parody (welcome to 2023, Bake-Off!) to the way Sumayah was like, Oh, the flavors I am using are awful and I hate them so here try this awful shit.

Then there was the show’s first-ever—and perhaps last-ever—American contestant, Jeff.

Jeff left in the middle of the first episode, sick. It happens, and meant that, for the first time, no one was sent home week one. (Maybe something to stick with? Let all the bakers bake two weeks in a row, to get used to the tent?)

When Jeff returned for the second episode, Biscuit Week, he told Noel, “In the States, what they say, if you ask for tea, ‘Oh, you don’t feel so well?’ because it’s not something you drink.”

A few on-screen minutes later, Jeff was drinking tea. Oh no! That’s when I started to hold my breath on behalf of everyone in the tent. Should Jeff be in a mask and/or a hospital?

“I’ve got some tea here. I’ll be fine,” he said, describing himself as “a bit wobbly.” Andy said Jeff “don’t seem to be in a happy place,” which made me think whatever Jeff was suffering from was not contagious. Then he walked out in the middle of the technical challenge.

Also during Biscuit Week, Illiyin fainted after finishing the showstopper challenge. Thankfully, she was fine, though she skipped the judging, leaving Noel Fielding to stand in her place. “Oh, this—this is horrible. I’ve had nightmares about this,” Noel said as he carried Illiyin’s bake to the table.

Then Dylan fell off his chair, tumbling into the aisle. The tent has never been this dangerous.

“What the hell is going on?” Paul Hollywood asked. Andy said, “We’re dropping like bloody flies.” (That was one of the few times I’ve understood a full sentence of his.) “This ain’t one of them murder mysteries, is it?” he joked. “Who done it?”

The Great British Bake-Off is more Clue than Contagion, thankfully, and the season stayed afloat and buoyant despite these literal stumbles.

The remarkable thing about this group of bakers is that they just move right through the tough parts. Things go wrong, they laugh or cry or take a breath, and proceed. They laugh even in times of struggle.

Great British Bake-Off host Alison Hammond and season 15 contestant John

Alison Hammond—who’s the primary reason last season was so terrific—helps with that. Besides the perfect balance of positive energy and joie de vivre she brings to the tent, she’s actually aware of the contestants and what they’re going through.

Alison is still a charmer, and this year she’s joined by a cast of amateur bakers who are just super-talented and having a grand old time.

On Bake-Off, the bakers have to let the producers know when they’re pulling something out of the oven, so a camera operator can get a shot of it. At one of those moments, queer farmer Mike said, “I’m gonna come out now,” and then, without missing a beat, said, “I am gay!”

They’re giving more laughs than some of the past hosts.

Noel Fielding, meanwhile, has moderated a little, but still treats the bakers as if they’re props and he’s Carrot Top on The Tonight Show.

That was never more true than during Caramel Week, when Noel—taking his screwing around too far—used a rolling pin as a bat and hit a ball of dough, which smashed into a container holding Nelly’s caramel. “You didn’t need that?” Noel asked. It was Caramel Week; she did.

Nelly looks at Noel after he smashed her caramel during a Great British Baking Show challenge

In a tent full of creative, delightful bakers, Nelly has been the standout for me. She’s so quick with banter.

When Alison picked up a piece of unused dough, she asked, “What are we gonna make with this?” Nelly said, “I don’t know; I’m thinking.” Alison asked, “How about a nice mustache?” and acted as if she was going to put it on Nelly’s face. Nelly said, “I’ve got already. I just shave it.”

When Alison tried to lift Nelly, Nelly called out, “Health and Safety!”

Nelly even just let Noel’s colossal screw-up go. No one would have blamed Nelly if she’d hit him with the rolling pin. Instead, she just made more caramel, and told the camera, “If I gonna go home, he will drive me home in posh car.”

Nelly, The Great British Bake-Off season 15’s break-out star

Nelly isn’t just meme-worthy reactions and witty quips, though. She also brings emotional depth and sincerity and doesn’t undercut it with humor.

The best example of that was her Biscuit Week puppet theatre showstopper included five stars, representing her miscarriages—which wasn’t something she planned to talk about, but did with grace.

When Nelly came in first in the Bread Week technical challenge, she got teary. “It’s very hard for me to take compliments, because all my life, I wasn’t good enough,” she said. “And from Paul, the king of bread, it was the biggest compliment I could have had.”

I can absolutely appreciate that: bread is Paul’s specialty, and he is an expert.

But I am so over the fawning over Paul Hollywood spilling into every challenge with his handshakes. He’s not handing them out like he did during season 9, when he thrust his arm out so often I thought he was having spasms.

We are 15 seasons into The Great British Bake-Off and the contestants salivate over approval from the male judge and the female judge—Prue Leith, previously Mary Berry—still has no such way of recognizing outstanding work?

Illiyin receives a Paul Hollywood handshake and nothing from Prue Leith on The Great British Baking Show season 15 (Image via Channel 4)

Paul and Prue are good at quickly and specifically describing what works or what doesn’t work in a bake. They’re also generous about acknowledging screw-ups without prying open a contestant’s wound and pouring salt into it, like, say, Food Network judges often do.

But they feel increasingly limited in their ability to judge a range of bakes. I know they’re British judges, but anything with a flavor profile beyond “this has flavor” seems to throw them for a loop.

During Bread Week, Paul and Prue sat and tasted the sample of the technical’s plaited bread—and ate it dry. What kind of monsters are these? Have they never heard of butter or olive oil?!

Paul Hollywood—who we all know is an expert in tacos because he once saw Mexico on a map—learned about gochujang during bread week, when Dylan made bread with it. Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of food competitions, but gochujang doesn’t seem that extravagant or unfamiliar.

He attributed his handshake for those buns entirely to that mysterious new flavor—well, and the size and shape of Dylan’s buns, which I think everyone can appreciate and wouldn’t mind shaking with their hands, tee hee.

They’re judging in 2024, so maybe they should understand flavors beyond plain bread? I exaggerate, but only slightly. Maybe they could just use guest judges to offer new perspective and a bit more range, whether that’s on baking techniques or buns themselves.

Speaking of buns, the judges have given the Sticky Bun Boys plenty of double entendre to work with this season. “Just work on your bulge,” Prue told Mike. So at least they’re doing a bang-up job there.

Also doing well: the producers. After too many seasons of ramping up the lunacy in challenges, and stupid-turned-insensitive theme weeks, they’ve returned to the basics.

And in GBBO season 15, they’ve brilliantly tweaked some of the technical challenges by replacing the instructions with something else.

The Cake Week technical gave bakers a Battenburg cake to taste and then recreate; the Bread Week technical challenge had only a demonstration from Paul Hollywood.

Those have helped freshen things up, as has this wonderful batch of bakers. Even if Paul and Prue are a little stale, The Great British Bake-Off is offering a fresh, tasty bite every week, whether that’s Nelly’s witty rejoinders or Dylan’s soft buns, which justify pitching that tent.