Chopped. Top Chef. Something from the Gordon Ramsay extended universe. All-star seasons of reality cooking shows have become a scrummy norm in recent years, with previous winners more than willing to return to their stomping grounds for the chance to be crowned an ultimate culinary champion. The Great British Baking Show, now in its 15th season, is an outlier. Despite having a deep bench of bakers who have prevailed in the tent since 2010, the show has never pursued a season specifically dedicated to reuniting those winners for a showstopper smackdown (though the occasional holiday special will bring back fan-favorite contestants). But as anyone who has mastered a meringue roulade will tell you: Patience pays off. We might get The Great British Baking Show: All-Stars after all.
Kieran Smith, Baking Show’s longtime creative director and executive producer, says his team is “very interested†in pursuing an all-star season — “a proper ten-episode series†— and it’s a strong possibility for the near future. “I think the vast majority of the bakers would take part in it,†he says. “People would love to see how their favorite bakers from the past would fare. There’s something fun about crowning the ultimate champion at this point.†Smith points to the success of Baking Show’s specials and the enthusiasm from participating contestants as a good barometer of interest. “Past bakers always love coming back to the tent, that’s the thing I’ll say,†he explains. “Because they tend to think when they finish their series, I’m never coming back. So they get another chance. I don’t think we’d struggle to get them.â€
An all-star season was first seriously considered back in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, when the show set up a biosphere at a countryside property for bakers to safely quarantine, live, and compete in. “It had never been floated before then,†Smith recalls. “At the time we were thinking, Is it going to be really hard to get new bakers during this lockdown period? Isn’t it a safer option to get returning contestants? It’s something people might really relish, bringing back those winners.†But when Smith and his team drilled down on the practicalities of trying to do a lockdown Baking Show, they realized — thanks to the ease of Zoom auditions, for instance — that they would be able to do it with new bakers. “Given that there was so little original programming going on at the time,†he adds, “it felt a little bit better to do a series with new faces as opposed to going back to people we’d seen before.â€
Although Smith is insistent that it wouldn’t be difficult to recruit from the pool of 14 victors, he admits “maybe one or two might not want to step back into the limelight again because of nerves.†(The majority of Baking Show’s seasons have featured ten contestants, which allows for some rejection wiggle room.) A different form of recency bias, however, may affect how older champions respond to the invitation. “The standard has gotten higher the further into the shows we’ve gone,†Smith notes. “No disrespect to Ed Kimber, who won season one, but the standard wasn’t as high as winning season ten or fifteen. The things we’ve identified as people’s abilities are much more finely honed the later on in the run. My expectation would be that the ultimate winner, the champion of champions, would be somebody who’s won in the past five or six years. But never say never. A lot of people that won have continued to bake and have publishing careers. They’re keeping their irons in the fire.â€
Smith also disagrees with Prue Leith, Baking Show’s current co-judge, who previously stated an all-star season would never happen due to winners fearing they could damage their reputations by losing. “It still remains the friendliest competition and the spirit of friendship and camaraderie,†he says. “We have bakers who have their moments. There’s a tiny bit of needling sometimes, but they’re there because they’re doing something they love in that tent. They’re not there to be super famous. You don’t really bake for yourself, do you? You bake for other people. These people are quite charitable and giving.†An attitude, Smith hopes, which will lend itself to the powers-that-be to finally green-light All-Stars: “If a bit of momentum builds as a result of this article, we’ll take it.â€