Entertainment

‘The Great British Baking Show’ Is Moving To Netflix & New Eps Are Coming Sooner Than You Think

American fans of Britain's greatest cooking show won't have to wait much longer to watch contestants craft crisp pastries and show-stopping cakes, as the hit Great British Baking Show is moving to Netflix, where new Baking Show episodes will now premiere in the U.S.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Netflix deal, which the streaming platform announced on Thursday, means that American fans no longer have to wait for episodes of The Great British Baking Show, known as The Great British Bake Off in the United Kingdom, to air on PBS before they are available to stream on Netflix. The deal covers the show's newest seasons, which are hosted by Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig, and fans can catch the most recent episodes (which originally aired in the summer of 2017 overseas) on Netflix starting August 31.

The show's current season — which will premiere on Aug. 28 in the U.K. — will hit the streaming platform later this year. The deal also includes Season 10 of the Baking Show, which will be filmed and air in 2019.

And if all of that sounds a little bit confusing, well, it is. See, when The Great British Baking Show started airing in the U.S. on PBS, things kicked off with what was technically Season 5, which has just recently finished airing on the BBC. From there, PBS aired Season 4 in America, followed by Season 6 and Season 7. The season that just wrapped up on PBS — considered Season 5 in the U.S, with winner John Whaite — originally aired as Season 3 in the U.K., way back in 2012.

Netflix's deal should hopefully help put an end to all of that airdate confusion by premiering the show in America right after it premieres in the U.K. Seasons 8, 9, and 10 of the British program will arrive on the streaming platform in that order, making things a little easier for people who have had to avoid six-year-old spoilers in order to look up their favorite contestants while watching.

Of course, one of the major downsides of Bake Off's deal with Netflix is that it only covers the seasons that were filmed after Mary Berry left the show. The queen of pastry stepped down as a judge in 2016, after Love Productions moved the show from BBC One to Channel 4. Berry was replaced by Baking Show's current judge, Prue Leith. “I’d done seven [seasons of Baking Show] and I was ready for new pastures," Berry told the U.K.'s Times in June. "I know about judging and I love doing it." However, British fans can still catch Berry and her trademark statement jackets on her new show, Britain's Best Home Cook, which kicked off in May in the U.K. "With Bake Off, we’d got people baking. Now we can get people cooking. I can’t wait for that to happen. We want to inspire people to be a little bit more adventurous," Berry said.

Berry was not the only one to leave The Great British Baking Show in 2016. Hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc also left after the move as an act of loyalty to the BBC, which helped the show become a cultural phenomenon since its premiere back in 2010.

But alas, even though American fans won't get to see Perkins, Giedroyc, or Berry in these new episodes, at least they'll get to see them in the first place.