When you think of wholesome holiday cheer, what do you envision? The smell of freshly baked cookies wafting through a pastoral English country manor? Or maybe a family, gathered around the telly to watch a good-natured, gentle dessert-based competition, wherein the contestants wear nice sweaters and hug? Replace the cookie smell with that of an active grease fire and the hugging with stern Catholic-school discipline and you probably have an idea of what the upcoming Great Festive Bake Off featuring the Derry Girls cast will look like. This New Year’s Day, Channel 4 is celebrating peace, love, and craic with a crossover event between everyone’s favorite streaming exports from opposite ends of the lawful-chaotic alignment spectrum.
On Thursday, Channel 4 announced: “Baking up some New Year’s-inspired bakes and competing for the coveted Star Baker title are Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Nicola Coughlan, Jamie-Lee O’Donnell, Dylan Llewellyn, and Siobhan McSweeney.” No, you didn’t fall asleep in front of Netflix and have a crossover-episode dream again. The actors who play Erin, Clare, Michelle, James, and Sister Michael really will face the judgment of Noel, Sandi, Prue, and Paul as they make … whatever “New Year’s-inspired bakes” are? Do the U.K. or Ireland have specific New Year’s desserts that we don’t know about? Terry’s Chocolate Orange … that’s a thing, right? Regardless, they’d better have the cast do Mary Berry’s nun-inspired choux religieuses. If that’s not the exact center of this particular Venn diagram, we don’t know what is!
