Imagine, for a moment, that you’ve worked up the courage to apply to feature as a contestant on a baking competition on national television. You’ve filled out a long application form, warmly describing your humble crumble skills learned while watching a granny take melon-sized cooking apples and cobbling together something delicious. You’ve made it through the auditions rounds, and now here you are, a place at the pastel workbench of The Great Irish Bake-Off.
You've ironed your nicest blouse, pressed your tweediest waistcoat, and you're waiting for the director to shout action. And then imagine the moment when the penny drops and you realise the set is actually TV3’s own version of Saw, trapping its cheery Irish bakers in a nightmare of technical ineptitude.
Now, fittingly, in its third season on TV3, the producers and task makers on the Irish version of Britain’s favourite TV show still haven’t quite figured out how to gently ease people into a competition. The nine women and three men that made up the amateur bakers on the first episode were tossed a technical of such finicky finesse that the PTSD seemed to carry forward into last Sunday’s second episode, with one of the bakers taken away in an ambulance after going faint at the sight of chilled butter. We wish her well, she'd earned the reprieve.
“Unlike the signature challenge,” Anna Nolan told them on that first night’s show, without even as much as a single entendre to lift the mood after the free-for-all shambles of the any-dessert-you-want opening round, “You haven’t got a clue what the recipe is.”
Nor did any of us, even after it was revealed.
A trio of exotic cheesecakes, uniformly sized. Surrounded by a tempered lattice of chocolate. Smugly standing atop a cheeky coconut-crumble base. Pause for product placement. Set with gelatine. With clearly defined jelly layers of mango and passionfruit agar-agar jelly. Under a layer of apricot jam, with perfectly pruned physalis berries and orange segments. And a mint sprig. In two hours. Ready, set, woe.
The technical trip up, a trio of exotic cheesecakes [TV3]
“Planning, precision, presentation,” reminded judged Paul Kelly, whose laborious recipe the bakers were following. The show is constantly reminding us that the bakers are in a new location, using new equipment, under new pressures they don't experience when cooking at home. Just why the show's producers wanted to destroy their confidence in the opening episode remains unclear. Had they just watched the Hunger Games, and wanted to recreate the experience of brutal competition with desserts?
"This hasn't set," judge Paul tells them, looking at a plate covered in wallpaper paste. "The flavour is gorgeous," he adds. It's his recipe, after all. Lilly Higgins stands there, echoing his statements. The only difference between her and last year's judge Biddy White Lennon is a more impressive wash and blow dry. Anna Nolan hides off camera. We watch, like voyeurs, as the cheesecake snuff film plays out.
Most of the results looked something like the remnants of squeezed spot on the chin of a teenage boy, with pathetic chocolate whiskers sprouting at irregular angles. In their talking heads to the camera after the judges had slopped their Solero soup with coconut-crunch croutons, most of the contestants looked embarrassed, many apologising.
Things didn't much improve in the second episode. Layered coffee cakes were scrutinised, some of them appeared to be melting. Then they had to bake a Halloween cake. Not a single barmbrack was made. No one was eliminated. Except for viewers, presumably.
None of this is the contestants' fault; the show doesn't seem to have their best interests at heart.
Across the Irish Sea, their first technical challenge this year was to bake a walnut cake, with some buttercream in the middle and a boiled icing around it. Nothing more exotic on the ingredients list than some cream of tartar. The contestants on the Irish Bake-Off can at least take solace in the fact that Nadiya Hussain, the show’s ultimate winner, came last in that challenge. There might be some hope for them yet.
To hear what James thought of the Channel 4 sitcom Catastrophe, and what tricks South Park is up to in its 19th season, listen back to the TV on the Radio segment from today's Moncrieff.
