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Sue & Mel: Pilfering Presenters

Athena

By Athena
in The Great British Bake Off

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ArtJimmerson

ArtJimmerson

Rylan Clark would be tremendous!! That's a great shout. He says it like it is and isn't afraid to be himself, he's very quick and witty.

Couldn't disagree more about Ant n Dec, they're two of the only presenters to have stayed current for over a decade and they appeal to all age ranges.

If the Americans want someone calm then they could do a lot worse than Rishi Persad, his time on Channel 4 racing really saw him come on as an on-screen presence and he's very much a not-in-your-face anchor.

halopub

halopub

On 9/17/2016 at 9:44 PM, Kromm said:

If budget WERE no object, but Mel and Sue were still out, and they had to stick with a doubleact... I'd toss money at Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders. 

French and Saunders would be a dream team!  I was thoroughly entertained by Jen's appearance as a competitor on the charity version. Michael Sheen, too.

Ainsley Harriott is one of the names floating around. I'm okay with him but from what I remember of his US show, he's more than a touch perky. It would be different, though, to have a host who has made a living with his kitchen skills.

I don't remember Claudia Winkleman's stint as host for one of the Sport Relief episodes, but she has really grown on me during the different seasons of Sewing Bee.

Sue started getting on my nerves with mannerisms and reaction to bingate but I've always liked Mel.

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shandy

shandy

2 hours ago, ArtJimmerson said:

Claudia Winkleman is a massive cokehead if you haven't noticed, couldn't give her a job she'd be trying to lace the contestant's pastries with the white stuff.

Claudia is a-mazing, cokehead or not. She's so not predictable, and reminds me so much of all the quirky clever Jewish girls in college I loved to listen to in full argument - they were so cultured and anarchic and I was so suburban - Claudia even dresses the same - black black and more black. I also like how she cultivates a broad audience - she almost makes that dancing show watchable, almost.  She can switch between  New Yorker style literary jokes to belly laughs in seconds.  Maybe that's more common in the UK, but  it's unusual and enjoyable, at least to me.

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ArtJimmerson

ArtJimmerson

She is unpredictable indeed, mainly because she's so off her nut that she doesn't know what's going on. Nothing wrong with someone who likes the gear, mind.

It's just occurred to me..........Stephen Fry!!!!! He'd be the one, I'll even give you Claudia if they double her up with Stephen, now that's a combo I'd be down for.

jpgr

jpgr

I saw this on another site, and it shows what Mel and Sue really brought to GBBO, and shows what Love Productions maybe originally intended and might become without them:

Quote

Here's something you might not know about Mel and Sue: they nearly quit once before. Last year, while promoting her memoir, Sue revealed that she and Mel walked off the set during Bake Off's first season because the producers were trying to coax human-interest drama—and the inevitable tears—out of contestants. "We felt uncomfortable with it, and we said 'We don't think you've got the right presenters,'" Sue told the Telegraph. "I'm proud that we did that, because what we were saying was 'Let's try and do this a different way'—and no one ever cried again. Maybe they cry because their soufflé collapsed, but nobody's crying because someone's going 'Does this mean a lot about your grandmother?'" Bringing up dead relatives at stressful times is a time-honored technique for introducing tension into a television show, but it's no way to treat your family.

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txvoodoo

txvoodoo

On 9/14/2016 at 2:58 PM, ArtJimmerson said:

Have there ever been two more underwhelming, self-indulging, uncharismatic and ignorant presentors on television? Hold your breath, I'll answer it for you.........NO.

<snip>

GOOD RIDDANCE to the untalented duo.

Bring in Ant & Dec.

There's always one outlier in every forum!

On 9/14/2016 at 5:14 PM, ArtJimmerson said:

I think that's ridiculous personally, if the bakers can't handle the pressure and fall apart into tears then they shouldn't be on the show. What are they going to do if they open up a bakery further down the line and have a rush of orders? Start crying because they can't meet the customers demand? Pathetic.

Honestly, when the Channel 4 version starts with MUCH better presenters than these two, you'll see that that are not at all an essential part of what makes the show work, you'll see what a hindrance they've been.

I'm gonna go all Texas on you: bless your lil' heart. Let's see how you do when cameras are on you, m'kay?

 

On 9/14/2016 at 5:30 PM, ArtJimmerson said:

For sure, but this is a tv contest show, not a nursery for handicapped people who need a boost in life. If their morale or confidence isn't in check then they have no place being on the show.

Out of curiosity is this a primarily American forum? Only signed up today and when I saw there was a Bake Off thread I assumed it was English, being a Londoner myself. Sunny weather here for a change, by the way.

And this is a forum of fans, not a slanging board.

Previously is multi-national, multi-cultural.  Bake Off airs here in the U.S., too, you know. Both on our PBS, and Netflix. Lots of fans! Amazingly, we watch a lot of UK telly here, much like you get all our hit shows. Globalism is a real thing!

On 9/15/2016 at 1:15 PM, ArtJimmerson said:

I have watched US Kitchen Nightmares, top quality viewing that show.

Don't get your knickers in a twist, Channel 4 will be absolutely fine, in fact better. They are a top professional broadcaster, they SPECIALIZE in REAL television.

US Kitchen Nightmares is a pile of steaming poo. It's mostly fake, the drama is ginned up beyond belief, and most of the restaurants are now closed. Ramsey is like a completely different person when on US show versus UK. And it has a dreadful voiceover narration.

On 9/16/2016 at 10:09 AM, ArtJimmerson said:

Why or why are we comparing US Kitchen Nightmares to Bake Off? US KN isn't even shown on Channel 4, it's not their sort of show. Channel 4 make their own shows with their own feel, they don't believe in just buying reality things to make a bit of profit, as I said before, they SPECIALIZE in making REAL shows, they are best known for their top-quality documentaries that get to the root and heart of problems. They are experts at keeping a show down to earth and not over-exadurating things.

I know you lot are all worried, and if ITV or any other channel had bought the rights to Bake Off then you'd have a right to be, but honestly, Channel 4 is the only place other than the BBC that could do this show justice.

Seeing as none of you have commented on, or agreed with my statement of getting Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth to replace Mel and Sue, how about we get Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson?

Or, how about these two - Howard Stern and Melania Trump?

"US KN isn't even shown on Channel 4, it's not their sort of show. " Oh really? http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ramsays-kitchen-nightmares-usa

Look, I love a lot of Ch 4 shows: "Location, Location, Location", George Clarke's shows, The Last Leg among others. But GBBO has its own feel, its own style, which in my view is incompatible with being a for-profit show. I'm obviously not alone.

"...how about we get Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson?"

LOL, dream high, boy.

"Or, how about these two - Howard Stern and Melania Trump?"

This explains an awful lot about you.

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sum

sum

Channel 5 showed an hour long documentary about the duo a couple months ago. 'Funny Women: The Mel & Sue Story'. 

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/the_mel_and_sue_story/

Quote

Documentary about gently irreverent comedy duo and Bake Off show-stealers, Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.

They have become Britain's favourite female double act, famed for their beautifully pitched, raised-eyebrow humour and cheeky innuendo. But it is the pair's undeniable warmth for one another, which audiences can sense must come from years of genuine friendship, that really sets the twosome apart. But the journey to the top for Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins hasn't been a smooth one.

This is a story of two supremely down-to-earth people, who have earned adoration from a massive mainstream audience without ever trying to be something they're not. Both hailing from south London, Mel & Sue met at Cambridge in the comedy kingmaker that is the Footlights review. Like so many others, they honed their self-effacing double act on the stages of Edinburgh before getting a break appearing in sketches with their most famous forerunners, French & Saunders.

Their first show as main presenters was the fondly remembered daytime show, Light Lunch. The programme made the duo into household names, but just as it looked like their rise would be meteoric, things faltered.

For several years, Mel and Sue appeared - both together and as individuals - on various projects. While Mel at one point came close to bankruptcy, the ladies' luck was in when, in 2010, they were asked to host an unlikely sounding new show called The Great British Bake Off.

What happened next is the stuff of TV legend, culminating in genuinely astonishing audience numbers - an eye-watering 16 million armchair bakers tuned in for the last ever episode.

Widely admired for not going 'with the dough' when the show switched stations, Mel & Sue are now firmly established as top-of-the-game presenting talent, and the world of telly entertainment is truly their oyster.

I doubt there's a legal way to watch it outside of the UK though...

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howiveaddict

howiveaddict

 My local PBS is currently showing a series Sue did last year called The Ganges.  She explores the area of the Ganges River in India. It is a very real and raw feeling, at times documentary.  The pollution of the river, and the way people live is  astounding.  Sue got quite wore out you can tell filming this.  The odor was horrendous at times.  She stayed a few weeks in Varanasi the sacred city where cremations are performed.  It's well worth watching if one has the chance.

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Aulty

Aulty

I only made it through the first couple of episodes.  Its not great.

The premise of the show is ok but I don't think Mel and Sue are great actresses. They are good show hosts and panellists, but I don't enjow their other stuff as much as their Bake Off banter (although Sue's first show Getting Out was well written the acting let it down).

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meep.meep

meep.meep

Sue Perkins has a new show on Netflix (?) about her turning 50 and deciding to do a bunch of things that scare her and/or are not legal in England.  Three episodes, we watched the first two.  There is a thing about donkeys in the first episode that is truly funny.  It seems to all be set in South America and Mexico.  The pandemic hits and slows her down for two years.

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roseslg

roseslg

18 hours ago, meep.meep said:

Sue Perkins has a new show on Netflix (?) about her turning 50 and deciding to do a bunch of things that scare her and/or are not legal in England.  Three episodes, we watched the first two.  There is a thing about donkeys in the first episode that is truly funny.  It seems to all be set in South America and Mexico.  The pandemic hits and slows her down for two years.

Yeah, I saw it. It was a fun show. The donkey bit was funny. My old music teacher has mentioned that folks would do that to chickens (him included). We all wanted to scrub our brains out after that.

ombre

ombre

(edited)

Ah, humor is in the eye of the beholder.  Count this comment as a massive warning that the donkey bit is pretty emphatically not gonna count as funny to a lot of people.  It's a segment about

Spoiler

whether or not there are areas where most of the men have sex with donkeys.  Sue can't believe it's true.  Turns out, it's true.  She's quite game for a lot of the rest of the hijinks people suggest, and tries to go along with this bit that she's now been roped into, but she (a vegan and famously an activist against cruelty to animals) is clearly pretty upset about both the overall idea and having to watch men demonstrate their technique.

I have lots of more nuanced thoughts on the various layers of consent and power in the whole segment that I'm gonna skip - don't want to hijack his whole thread - but I started watching in part because of the positive comments in this thread and frankly, I wouldn't wish that sense of "oh, this will be lovely fun--oh wait wtf?" on anyone else.

I'm a bit of two minds about the show overall.  On the one hand, she's always a lovely person, as are the people she's meeting up with - and hopefully some of them (she's visiting comedians in various countries) will get a nice bit of a netflix bump from it.  On the other hand, the whole premise of the show flirts a lot with exoticism and whatnot.  I'm rather torn - I'm so fond of her, I'm enjoying the idea of middle-aged-lady-tries-various-ways-of-cutting-loose, but...  ah... on its own it might be fine, but it's impossible to watch it without thinking of the centuries of tales of privileged Euros traveling the "primitive" world and tasting forbidden pleasures (to give a very gentle description of such narratives).  (I can't help but wonder if the donkey bit was a way of punching back at that dynamic, frankly, made complicated by layers of gender and so on.)

Edited by ombre
Because gee, maybe this is not the moment to describe Sue as an "ardent animal lover." :D :P
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Aulty

Aulty

I haven't seen this, and I don't think this story is doing much to convince me otherwise. I always though Sue Perkins' travel shows are a bit sub-par. Exoticism is a very fitting description, considering rumors about farmers and their sheep. And its not like they would stumble across that without her knowing.
This is the kind of thing you'd expect to maybe come up on a more serious Simon Reeve programme.

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