'The Great British Sewing Bee' Finally Gets a Streaming Home in America

Our decade-long deprivation nightmare is about to finally be over. The Great British Sewing Bee, the third in the original trio of "Great British" reality shows from Love Productions alongside The Great British Baking Show and The Great Pottery Throw Down, is finally coming to America. Long overlooked by American streamers, even though Baking Show is still going strong on Netflix with Season 16, and Throw Down was the only breakout hit HBO Max ever managed, Sewing Bee is precisely what it says on the tin: Ten "home sewers" gather to compete (thankfully not in a tent) with one winner taking home the trophy. Despite the obvious out-of-the-box hit this would be, it took Roku to finally bring it to the U.S.

Of all the variations on the Baking Show format that have been tried both in the U.K. and in the U.S., Sewing Bee features the most obvious craft to use when cloning the original. Food and clothing go to the heart of people's basic needs, and it's an extremely rare person who has never had to prepare their own food or needed to sew a button back on a favorite piece of clothing. Also, unlike Throw Down, fabric and sewing projects are ones that can be treated as timed exercises, the same way baking challenges are, making the format of Sewing Bee much closer to Baking Show's.

However, like both Baking Show and Throw Down, Sewing Bee took a few seasons to find its sea legs, cycling through multiple hosts over ten seasons. Judge Patrick Grant is the only member of the roster to appear in all ten seasons, first with May Martin before switching to the more Edna Mode-esque Esme Young in Season 4. As for the hosts, the show initially started with BBC stalwart Claudia Winkleman (The Traitors U.K.), and is currently held by Kiell Smith-Bynoe, whose run began with Season 10.