Mary Berry’s still divine in The Great British Bake Off

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/oct/08/mary-berry-divine-great-british-bake-off

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At points over the last 10 weeks, entering the name “Mary” in some search engines has resulted in the mother of Christ coming second to Mary Berry, the female judge on The Great British Bake Off. The fact that the matriarch of a major world religion should face such competition from the creator of divine Victoria sponges is a mark of the series’ improbable impact, expanding, like over-yeasted dough, through each week of the fifth series, until, just before 9pm on Wednesday, Nancy Birtwhistle, a retired GP practice manager, beat pre-show favourite, the builder Richard Burr, and the Anglo-Spanish graphic designer Luis Troyano.

Theorists of TV have argued that the trick to making popular programmes is to flatter viewers’ fantasies. But, while widespread dreams of a showbiz career might explain the success of The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, who previously suspected that so many Britons had ambitions to be big on the ballroom floor (Strictly Come Dancing) or – now – in the cake tin?

This secret floury-handed army has turned The Great British Bake Off into one of the medium’s super-brands, stacking up viewers (7 million-plus since the show’s promotion from BBC2 to BBC1) and publicity (with Watergate-level coverage of an alleged sabotage of one contestant’s baked alaska by another) as thickly as the 20-layer sponge cake that was the technical challenge set in last week’s semi-final. It has also introduced into common usage terms such as “sugar work”, “proving” and “morning rolls.”

The only overlap between Mary Berry and the previously-most-famous Mary is that both are closely associated with men known for performing miracles with loaves of bread. But the one on Bake Off, Paul Hollywood, has brought the series its two bouts of bad publicity, first when his marriage was briefly threatened by reports of morning rolls with an American TV cook, and then, more recently, by allegations of getting too much dirt in the mix with smutty puns about lifting, spreading and soggy bottoms.

Unfortunately, Hollywood has now reached the stage of late Julian Clary, where everything he says sounds as if it might be double entendre. “Got to get the bounce inside that beautiful little roll!,” he instructed the bakers last night, and you felt the fingers of middle England hovering in confusion over the hot-line to the broadcast regulator Ofcom.

However, the presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins, who had also been accused of cheekily getting a rise out of baking terms, seemed to be on best behaviour, heroically resisting any “tart” jokes during discussion of the bijou lemon flans. The final technical challenge went, counter-intuitively, back to basics, asking the rivals to make miniature versions of three patisserie classics: sponge cake, tart au citron and scones. Surprisingly, Burr, having set a record by winning star baker five times in this series, suddenly behaved as uncharacteristically as Zinedine Zidane in the 2006 World Cup. Where the footballer head-butted someone, Burr lost his head, suddenly thrown by the very simplicity of the mini-cake challenge, and finishing last in that round. “I literally over-egged the pudding!,” he declared, with a use of cliche unusually knowing for peak-time entertainment.

The technical challenge for the final of a talent show is that, with the contestants reduced to so few, each round is shorter, so that the format contracts. TGBBO stuffed the gaps with some biographical “sugar work”, mini-profiles of the finalists, in which the wives of both men cried, and Nancy’s husband said that she was the sort who could turn her hand to anything; when she trained a dog, it ended up at Crufts.

With Richard running behind Nancy and Luis, the title decider was the creation of a piece montée. This French delicacy – which Paul, Mel and Sue all monastically managed not to translate as mounted piece – is a sort of operatic stage-set made of pastry. Richard went for a windmill tableau and Nancy for a moulin rouge with sugar sails, while Luis created a village scene that included a biscuit mining-wheel with choux-pastry rope. Nancy complained that her hands were shaking so much she had broken a sail, but the wind was with her.

Cynics may attribute the success of Bake Off to the British obesity crisis so often mentioned in the press, but its popularity is also surely due to the fact that baking is easier than dancing to try at home and to its challenge to TV’s usual demographics: this must surely be the first talent show in which a 60-year-old female winner has been chosen by a 79-year-old woman co-judge.

With Grandmother Mary now as famous – and seemingly almost as saintly – as Mother Mary, she has also made real the ambition for a nation once attributed to a famous Marie: let them eat cake. The challenge now to the BBC is to avoid becoming greedy and carving their hit franchise into too many slices.