‘Great British Bake Off’ Isn’t Giving Much Away With Its Trailer

With Great British Bake Off upon viewers once again, GBBO has delivered a trailer of disembodied souls reacting to key moments from the new series, which starts at 8 p.m, Tuesday 21 September on Channel 4.

Over the course of 32 seconds, the voices of the new GBBO contestants reveal some surprising stats — “more people have been to space than have been in the tent” — some disappointing hold-outs — “i got a handshake!” — some general chaos — “I broke the oven”; “the head exploded!” “I’ve literally dropped a clanger” — some general joy — “get in!” — and an outright lie — “It’s just a shame it’s a competition.”

It follows neatly in the footsteps of the teaser shared a fortnight ago, which was just the Great British Bake Off tent and some ominous music, not just in form but in its refusal to give even a hint of whether or not the show has changed at all this year. The 2021 series is succeeding a 2020 series that decisively punctured its own coziness complex, showing that it was never really reasonable to expect a show conducted and filmed in the real world to take its fans out of it. There’s plenty of positive fuzziness and gentle disaster in the soundbites (as well as the crushing revelation that grasping Paul Hollywood’s sweaty palm is still a key metric of success) but bigger questions about. the show’s major cultural blindspots when it comes to international baking and its bizarrely inconsistent approach to judging will have to wait for Cake Week.

Check back for the first recap of the new series.