The Great British Baking Show: The Professionals is better than just a spinoff

polygon.com:

The Great British Baking Show isn’t what it used to be. The absurdly charismatic hosts from the first few seasons are long gone. Only one of the show’s original judges still remains (and it’s not the good one). The show’s own popularity has cost it much of its quaintness while more and more of the challenges seemed aimed at creating viral (potentially problematic) social media content rather than compelling television.

The Great British Baking Show’s saving grace has long been its contestants, whose charming normalness made the show somehow feel like anti-reality TV. It continues to melt the heart when the bakers help each other out (You’re competing! What are you doing?!) but on the whole the show is fast becoming a victim of its own success. As more and more contestants are also longtime fans of the show, it has begun feeling incestuous and self-aggrandizing instead of quaint. Its popularity has also all but guaranteed that contestants can launch a social media baking career with just an appearance on the show. Fame (or the potential for fame) can corrupt anything, even a wholesome little baking show.

Taken altogether, the show just doesn’t feel like it used to. But I am happy to report that there is an alternative: The Great British Baking Show: The Professionals.

Available for streaming on Netflix, this spinoff series is the most enjoyable the show has been in years. First, as the name suggests, this isn’t a show about hobbyist bakers (or future social media stars). Instead, this show draws its contestants from professional bakers and pastry chefs, who compete as two-person teams. Critically, they operate actual bakeries. Don’t expect to find a precocious college-bound pastry wunderkind or an endearingly clumsy home