It’s 22 years since Peep Show began its nine-season run. God, weren’t we all happier then? With the possible exception, ironically, of its beleaguered leads Mark (David Mitchell) and Jez (Robert Webb) – though whether Jez, who made the average whelk look like a philosopher king, ever had the psychological capacity to be beleaguered, I’m not sure. Never mind. Mark was surely beleaguered enough for both of them.
Whatever. Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain and Andrew O’Connor’s breakthrough show was a joy – however agonisingly painful at times. What’s more, it is lovely to see the old gang again: this time in the spotlessly clean environs of the Bake Off tent instead of a shabby Croydon flat painted various shades of B&Q’s Miasmic Despair range, for The Great Christmas Bake Off.
(An aside, but theming a Bake Off Christmas special around a show and a group of actors who are still clearly friendly with one another is my device of choice, by the way. Bringing former competitors back or playing series winners off against one another is not the way. By this stage of the festive proceedings, the merest hint of competition between people who can genuinely bake and for whom it might be of any importance at all to be seen to be doing their best, with all the potential for disaster that such a position implies, would undo me. Bring me no-stakes television only, from now until the new year. Ideally on a tray full of cheese straws. Thank you.)
David Mitchell is here. It is his second time in the tent; he went up against Michael Sheen, Jameela Jamil and Sarah Brown for 2015’s Comic Relief. He has only baked four cakes in his life and two of those occasions have been broadcast: “A rate of being televised even Delia Smith cannot match.” He’s a bright lad, we know, but he is to his detriment foxed by a timer. Isy Suttie, who played Mark’s idiosyncratic and frequently disappointed love interest, Dobby, has an artistic bent that bodes well for success – at least in the decorative aspects of the endeavour.
Matt King (Super Hans) once worked as a chef. He has never, he says, watched a single episode of either Peep Show or Bake Off (“What’s that?”). Co-presenter Alison Hammond cannot believe this. She says she doesn’t watch the episodes of This Morning that she’s not in, which raises the distinct possibility that every time she does do duty on the ITV sofa she shoots straight home to watch it back. Thus raising the possibility that bubbly Alison Hammond is a sociopath. I think we’ll park that until the new year too.
Olivia Colman is fabulously competent at everything. It cannot and should not be any other way. Sophie Winkleman, who played Big Suze, channels her alter ego marvellously. “It was very upright and hard,” she says of the headboard to the bed made as part of her showstopper challenge. “But it has lost its promise.” When the group is told it has just 10 minutes left to complete a mini turkey pie challenge, she looks at the state of her offering. “Fascinating disaster,” she murmurs intensely. Robert Webb is not in the lineup, but this is so very Jez that I do not want to hear talk of anything as prosaic as a scheduling clash. It was undoubtedly a character choice and I applaud it.
They make the aforementioned mini pies, a cake (“Vanilla paste,” comments Matt on his work in progress. “What AM I up to?”) and a dozen biscuit baubles each. David/Mark decorates them exactly as you would expect David/Mark to decorate a biscuit bauble and there is something very soothing about this. Everyone chats and jokes among themselves and Noel, Alison, Prue and Paul have the sense not to get in the way too much. It’s so nice. A little chance to exhale, God rest ye self a moment and brace yourself before the next fascinating piece of festive disaster comes along.
• The Great Christmas Bake Off is on Channel 4.
