BBC fires up pottery version of Bake Off
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Version 0 of 1. A new BBC show will aim to do for pottery what The Great British Bake Off did for homemade cakes and pastries. After hunts for the nation’s best baker, sewing enthusiast and allotment gardener, the next in BBC2’s “Great British…” series will be The Great British Pottery Throw Down, presented by Sara Cox. The new show is part of a season of programmes unveiled by BBC2 on Tuesday, including a new drama from Hugo Blick, creator of The Honourable Woman, set in contemporary Africa, and Nigella Lawson’s return to the channel for her first series in three years. Made by the production company behind The Great British Bake Off, the six-part pottery series will search for Britain’s “best budding potter”, with the 10 contestants’ creations judged by potter turned high street brand Keith Brymer Jones, and ceramic artist Kate Malone. With a “showstopper” round, each week will feature a “main make” in which the contestants have to transform a slab of clay into “glazed glory”. Cox, former presenter of the Radio 1 breakfast show who is now on Radio 2, said: “There’s something really raw and exciting about grabbing a lump of clay and creating something unique out of it. “Clay, mess, passionate potters and the team behind Bake Off. What’s not to love?” Lawson, last seen on Channel 4’s cookery contest flop The Taste, will present Simply Nigella. Her first BBC series since her drug revelations and split from Charles Saatchi, it promises a “new pared-down approach to cooking and eating”. “It’s about food that makes our life easier, that makes us feel better, more alive, and less stressed,” said Lawson. Familiar returning BBC2 faces include Professor Brian Cox, who will present “scientists and celebrities” panel show Six Degrees, Sue Perkins will trek across the Himalayas and historian Mary Beard will give her “definitive take” on the Roman Empire. The channel will also search for Britain’s best amateur hair stylist in Hair, presented by comedian Katherine Ryan, after the first series aired on BBC3, and Gareth Malone will front the Naked Choir, a hunt for the nation’s best amateur singing group, performing a cappella. No stranger to talent contests over the last few years, BBC2 has also been home to the Great British Menu, the Great British Garden Revival, the Great Interior Design Challenge and the Big Allotment Challenge. By some distance its most popular, The Great British Bake Off, which made stars out of judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, switched to BBC1 last year and was the most popular entertainment show of 2014, finishing with more than 13 million viewers. BBC2 controller Kim Shillinglaw, the corporation’s former science and natural history chief, now has the challenge of reinventing her biggest rating show, Top Gear, following the departure of Jeremy Clarkson. Highlighting drama hits such as Wolf Hall, starring Mark Rylance and Damien Lewis, Jimmy McGovern’s Banished and The Honourable Woman, Shillinglaw said BBC2 was “in great shape”. “We’ve got people talking and watching in significant numbers...I want BBC2 to be the place to come for the widest range of grown up, opinionated and entertaining content on British television.” New BBC2 comedies include Mum, starring Lesley Manville from the creators of BBC3’s Russell Tovey sitcom Him & Her, and Stag, a darkly comic thriller about a stag weekend from hell in the Scottish highlands. Elsewhere, historian Dominic Sandbrook will look at the global domination of Britain’s post-empire popular culture, and the Hairy Bikers will take 30 retired people to a secondary school in Old School, attempting to transform the lives and experiences of both. New factual programmes will focus on the children of the Gaza war, with Lyse Doucet, Britain’s forgotten slave owners and a series about a new sex offence unit set up by the Greater Manchester Police force. Other new series will look at the world of the Celts, with Neil Oliver and Alice Roberts, the mysteries of the Atlantic Ocean and the nature of Japan. Family Guy will also air on BBC2 before it moves to ITV in the autumn, with BBC3 due to go online only in October. |