But it’s a show that casts to appeal to their viewing demographic, just like Big Brother, or I’m A Celebrity or Strictly Come Dancing, and apparently after it moved to Channel 4 in particular, its key core viewing demographic is 16 to 34 year olds, not that different from, say, Love Island. Hence the casting skewing younger.
It was never just about baking. Even after you eliminate all the brilliant and accomplished amateur bakers who would never apply because it would be their idea of hell, choosing the twelve best bakers who did apply, purely on merit, would probably produce dull TV.
Even as far back as season 3, Danny Bryden in her blog is quite upfront about her set not even being the twelve best bakers who applied, but the twelve best bakers who applied who fitted certain demographic types. She said she was surprised she’d been selected, but thought that they’d chosen her precisely because she had no ambitions to change jobs to anything baking related, unlike John Waite, who was very ambitious, and Brendan, who had strong ideas about taking baking into care homes to work with dementia sufferers.
Plus, the application form is specifically designed, I gather, to weed out the people who only bake one specific type of thing (eg people who are more decorating obsessives, or have a very limited range). Ideally they want people who cook as well as bake, and use unusual ingredients, otherwise everything is pretty limited. Then you’re phoned by production researchers for a phone interview, and not just because they’re checking your claims — they want to see if you’re interesting, vivacious, eccentric in a way that will translate to screen. Someone monosyllabic who just keeps their head down and bakes efficiently and well isn’t good tv. Then you move to a screen test.
And GBBO, is ‘comfort tv’, so they also want bakers who they think are unlikely to lash out if someone takes their ice cream cake out of the fridge or accidentally steals their custard. In that sense it’s the opposite of reality shows that cast for conflict.
I was listening to The Rest is Entertainment yesterday, and it had a special episode on the origins of Big Brother. The woman who won the season Jade Goody was in had said she’d known immediately from the group selection day that Jade would be selected because she rubbed everyone up the wrong way, and was selected for a mock ‘eviction” by literally everyone.
That wouldn’t work on GBBO.