'The Great British Baking Show's Holiday Edition Is Last Year's Joy
The Great British Baking Show's success in America sometimes feels like something that happened despite everyone's best efforts, not because of it. PBS brought the show over five seasons into its run, proceeded to air everything out of order, and never attempted to keep it in a spot where local stations would be encouraged to run it on the national schedule. Netflix kept the numbers confusing and tried to call them "collections" to boot, put Masterclasses and extraneous seasons under random subheaders, and even released two seasons as binge-watches before it finally got a clue.
The Great British Baking Show: Holidays have suffered in much the same manner. PBS didn't know what to do with these precisely dated specials; Netflix at least runs them during the holiday period, but because the streaming service does not have rights to run them day-and-date on streaming (and cannot live stream), episodes are perpetually four days late. That's fine for the regular season but not so much for New Year's Day, which makes no sense to stream on January 4th. So instead, Netflix saves these episodes and airs them 11 months later.
That's led to odd moments before, like Sandi appearing as host for the holiday episodes months after Americans had watched Matt Lucas take over for her. It does the same here, as Lucas, whose health issues were well documented at the beginning of this season, suddenly rewinds the clock. But perhaps more importantly, the Christmas episode stars a cast of It's A Sin, a limited series that was still big news in 2021 but completely forgotten by 2022, not the least of which because it didn't come to Netflix in the states but was overlooked and undermarketed on rival HBO Max.
