'Bake Off has gone off the boil. Is it time to give it a rest?'

The opening episode to this year’s Great British Bake Off was watched by 3.6 million viewers, down from 4.3 million the year before. It’s a decline that would make any soufflé fall flat, especially when it was picked up by some on Twitter as not only being the lowest opener for a Channel 4 series so far, but also the lowest overnight figure since the series was on the BBC Two, where the show originally started.

Only, that doesn’t really tell you the full story. The 2023 series started with 4.3 million and then rose to eight 8 million, once you added in all those who watched it later on the Channel 4 website. It’s a reflection of how much our viewing habits have changed over the past ten years, with many of us watching shows days or even weeks after they are first broadcast. Bake Off used to be appointment-to-view but now — like a lot of shows on traditional TV — not so much.

Bake Off is still comfortably one of Channel 4’s most popular programmes, and attracts a large amount of younger viewers, but it is fair to say that we are far from the once hedonistic ratings highs that Bake Off once had, such as the record 10 million who saw the opener to the BBC One series 2016 (the one that Candice won) or the 13 million who turned into Nadiya Hussain's emotional win (which featured a speech where she said she would stop putting limits to herself: "I'm never going to say 'I can't do it'. I'm never going to say 'maybe'. I can, and I will.")

So how well is Bake Off holding up in 2024? Well, the show is still fantastically well cast. Last year consisted of Saku and her relatable facial expressions, University student Rowan who often talked about his love for charcuterie nights with friends (Rowan is a University student) and Matty, who turned out to be a fascinating winner because he switched from the underdog to the outright winner just in time for that year’s final.

This year’s bakers look like an interesting bunch too, my favourites this year including Dylan, who must be the first ever skateboarder in Bake Off history and cockney car mechanic Andy, who perpetually wears a cap backwards, in his forties.

But it is fair to say that Bake Off hasn’t always been as much of an enjoyable watch in recent years. They have had to bake things that just about nobody have heard of, such as vertical tarts, and Showstoppers that have felt rather daft and abstract, such as one where they had to bake an illusion biscuit display depicting their favourite meal (it was as if they thought this up in a panic).

The show’s biggest flaw, however, has been times in which it has felt like the show has been deliberately trying to catch them out, such as the memorably mean treacle pudding technical challenge from last year’s series. The Dessert Week recipe set by Paul Hollywood deliberately did not tell the bakers that the puddings needed to be in the oven for nearly half of the 90 minutes of time they were allocated, so every baker’s attempt came out raw. Hollywood then ‘jokingly’ walked out of the tent whilst judging their bakes, when arguably it wasn’t their fault to begin with.

The first two episodes of this series have not fallen into that trap… yet, although there was a slight frustration in the first technical challenge where they threw in the show’s first ever ‘taste and bake’ challenge, where the bakers were given the finished product and then had to recreate it without using a recipe.

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There have been other flaws in the show too, but thankfully they seemingly ditched them altogether. Increasingly surreal themed weeks that feel as if they were picked out of a hat (Roaring Twenties Week, Festivals Week and Forgotten Bakes) have been ditched in favour of the more traditional themed weeks such as Cake Week and Biscuit Week.

Overly harsh critiques (so far!) by the judges have more or less disappeared, although Paul Hollywood has been dishing out his trademark Hollywood Handshakes, given during what he considers to be a perfect bake, a lot earlier than you might expect (with one handshake given during a Showstopper, which has only happened a handful of times in the show’s history).

Perhaps then that the show’s biggest flaw is that there’s simply too much Bake Off. When you add up the ten episodes in the main series, plus celebrity and professionals editions, and Christmas specials on Channel 4, the show is on television for pretty much a third of the year. And that is even before you add on Junior Bake Off, which they put on in the early evening for several weeks for the kids.

And with the show now on a commercial network rather than on the BBC, each episode is running between 75 and 90 minutes, which is a stretch for even the most dedicated of fans.

Even the most popular shows need a rest from time to time, to refresh and reinvigorate and make us remember why it was so good in the first place. Perhaps Bake Off needs some time to rest in the proving drawer.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

The Great British Bake Off airs on Channel at 8pm on Tuesdays.

This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/bake-off-ratings-decline-time-to-rest-203053601.html