'The Great British Baking Show' Season 7 Finale Recap

When The Great British Baking Show premiered in the summer of 2010 on BBC, it was not the show we know today. The six-episode series was an amalgamation of ideas: History, U.K. geography, fundraising (and getting others involved in starting baking fundraisers of their own), and a reality competition to bind it all together. Ten seasons in, it is now entirely a reality show, with contestant tears, mean judges, friendly hosts, and seemingly impossible challenges. Despite all the hurdles, including a massive scandal and cast turnover when the show moved from the BBC that nurtured it to Channel 4, which profited from it, the show remains a widespread phenomenon -- on both sides of the pond.

The choice by Netflix to go week-to-week this year has made U.S. audiences more aware of how the show has changed since the BBC/PBS days. Fans are starting to consider if the show has run out of ideas, or if it's just failing to pull in the amateur talent it once mined so expertly. But despite the debates over this year's Technical Challenges and Showstopper concepts, the show remains as popular as ever going into the 2020s.

And it's popular because, no matter what the challenges are, the talent shakes out to the top by the finale every year to create some extraordinary final bakes. This season, those bakers are: