'The Great British Baking Show: Holidays': Happy Bakes Are Here Again

Over on the regular edition of The Great British Baking Show, a crisis is brewing, as the series has now turned out two extremely mediocre winners in a row, and all because judge Paul Hollywood can't just let the series play out without meddling. (Meanwhile, Prue Leith hints loudly that she's tired of all this and will no longer do the charity editions.) But over on The Great British Baking Show: Holidays, Netflix is turning back the clock 11 months to Alison Hammond's first-ever holiday specials in the tent as host to remind us all what an absolute delight she and Noel Fielding are together.

Last season, we recapped the Holiday edition precisely one week after the regular season finale, before the shock of the show's first genuine trainwreck of a finale had worn off, an experience made all the stranger by returning to Matt Lucas as host instead of Alison, giving the whole thing a sense of being out of time and place. (It helped — or maybe didn't help — that the first of the two installments, the Christmas episode, was made up of retired BBC talent who Americans wouldn't recognize.)

This year, I took a week off between episodes, partly because the Holiday edition did not arrive until Monday, December 9. It was the right choice, allowing me to come to both episodes a little fresher and enjoy them. Even better, both installments bring back favorites from previous years, all of whom experience Alison as host for the first time.