The British have a special knack for taking seemingly innocuous activities and turning them into stressful, high stakes competitions that are simultaneously soothing and uplifting. The best example is, of course, The Great British Bake Off, the show about cake that actually made everyone who watched it alternately sob and cheer for the contestants. What made the show so good is that even though it was supposed to be a competition, all the contestants were supportive friends who truly cared about each other. It was so pure, so full of love, that you couldn’t help but be drawn in. It seemed as though there was nothing else like the The Great British Bake Off on television, but a competition all about flower arranging called the The Big Flower Fight might strike the same perfect balance.
This Flower Arranging Competition Could Be the Next ‘Great British Bake Off’
Now, I know, flower arranging doesn’t exactly sound like the height of drama, but honestly neither did baking cakes and we ended up loving that. The premise of the show sounds so wholesome: ten pairs of amateur gardening enthusiasts (the bakers on The Great British Bake Off weren’t professionals either) come together to create “large scale flower installations” according to a press release from Netflix, where the show will air. The prize is a chance to display their own flower sculpture at Kew Gardens, in London. The stakes are high, and hopefully the gardeners can create the same tension with flowers that the bakers did with cake.
British comedians Vic Reeves and Natasia Demetriou (who is also the star of the television adaption of What We Do in the Shadows) will host the show while master gardener Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht will serve as the judge. That’s another commonality shared with The Great British Bake Off: Comedians take on the hosting duties while experts do all the judging, but only time will tell if Griffith-VanderYacht will become as beloved as Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood (okay, to be fair, Paul Hollywood is as much despised as he is loved).
The eight-episode series of The Big Flower Fight premieres on Netflix on May 18, and then we’ll see which respectable activity reigns supreme in our hearts: baking cakes or arranging flowers. 