Will Nigella be the secret ingredient to revive GBBO?

When Prue Leith announced she was leaving the “Great British Bake Off” – “I’m 86 for goodness sake” – all eyes turned to the possible candidates to be Paul Hollywood’s fellow judge for the 17th season of the hit TV show.

The speculation was ended today with confirmation that Nigella Lawson is to take over from Leith. She rose to fame with her 1998 book “How to Eat” and followed that with her first TV cooking show, “Nigella Bites”, two years later. Since then Lawson has been a mainstay on British screens and could be just what “Bake Off” needs to reverse its flagging fortunes.

‘Guaranteed ratings booster’

The prospect of Lawson joining the programme was “delicious”, and perhaps even the “most fabulous thing to happen to food television like, ever?!”, said Hannah Evans in The Times.

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Her energy and appeal make Lawson “any production company’s fantasy”. She is the “spoon-licking, finger-in-the-cream cook who made food sexy”, and is someone who “relishes stirring the pot”. For a show that already relies on winks and witty wordplay, Lawson will certainly bring a “whole new level of eye-twinkling double entendres and insinuations”.

Welcoming TV’s “sauciest chef” is exactly what the Channel 4 format needs, said The Telegraph. The chef turned social media personality is a “guaranteed ratings-booster” and a “wise pick”. No other TV chef has been able to “entrance the British public quite like Lawson”. Not even a cocaine scandal and tumultuous tabloid coverage of her relationship with businessman Charles Saatchi have detracted from her status as a “bona fide” national treasure.

Despite a casual, “schoolmarmish air”, her “incredible” recipes are backed up with serious pedigree both as a chef and on-screen presenter. To date, she has sold 8 million cookbooks worldwide and hosted 10 cooking programmes in the UK – not to mention recent ventures on MasterChef Australia – leaving her with an estimated net worth of £14 million. It’s hard to argue that Lawson isn’t a good addition to revamp the format: “Channel 4 might just have a ratings hit on its hands again”.

Lawson is the “only woman for the job” to turn around a show that has become “slightly long in the tooth over the last half decade or so”, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. She is “spectacularly British” and exudes a “familiarity” that will “reassure existing viewers” and bring an “international first-name recognition that might even end up growing the audience”. Her appointment is “the best possible call for a series that – if we’re honest – has lost its way”.

‘Destined for the knacker’s yard’

Not everyone is pleased with Channel 4’s decision. It’s “the wrong one”, said Asyia Iftikhar in Metro. For me, she will “feel out of place in the tent”. A better choice would have been former “Bake Off” winner Nadiya Hussain. She already has experience as a guest judge on the junior version of the competition and could have tapped into a “delightful mentor-protege dynamic” with Hollywood. It would have been a “win-win” and it is “wild” that she was not considered.

Lawson has enjoyed so much success as a solo presenter with her own projects, so it will be interesting to see how she fares in this format, said Adam White in The Independent. Her “glam, worldly and cosmopolitan” poshness will surely “clash with the cosy, jolly-hockey-sticks middle-Englishness of ‘Bake Off’”. Lawson’s shows are “reliably funny and warm and dazzling”, and sharing her brand with “Bake Off” could end up being mutually detrimental.

Lawson comes with a few reservations. Though her success is undeniable, her approach to baking is “typically simple”, said The Telegraph, and she is by no means a “classically trained pastry chef” like Leith or original judge Mary Berry. There are doubts “whether she could successfully complete even half of the challenges ‘Bake Off’s competitors take on”.

Then there’s the task of hosting itself. Used to presenting solo, she has “yet to prove herself as a team player” and share the limelight with co-hosts or contestants on this scale. Finding an on-screen balance is integral to the show, and there is no knowing, at least for now, if her “star power” will “translate” to “chemistry alongside veteran judge” Hollywood.

However, despite Lawson’s appointment, the whole GBBO format might already be a lost cause, said The Guardian. The show is caught in a doomed bind, risking becoming “stale” if it continues the “safe old formula that made it popular in the first place”. But if it ramps up the difficulty, it “risks alienating the home baker with bewildering levels of conceptual avant-garde science”.

The show has already generated a litany of spin-offs, with American, celebrity and junior offshoots. Add in a revolving door of presenters – think Sandi Toksvig, Matt Lucas, Alison Hammond, Noel Fielding, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins – and it becomes clear that the series is “much closer to its end than its beginning” and “destined for the knacker’s yard. But if it’s going to go out, it deserves to go out as strongly as possible.”