The Great British Bake Off will look as normal when the series returns to screens later this year, despite cast and crew adhering to a number of behind-the-scenes coronavirus measures.
No whisks are being taken during filming, with testing regimes put in place so that everyone on the show is confirmed negative for COVID-19 before they enter into a bubble.
Explaining how the show will adhere to coronavirus rules, Kelly Webb-Lamb, deputy director of programmes for Channel 4, said: “The car you’re driving to set also has to be quarantined, everything that comes on to set has to be properly disinfected to protect everybody on set and the production.
“That means everything is COVID-secure, so what you see looks like normal Bake Off because it it is normal Bake Off.
“That does mean the talent and cast and crew live in that bubble.”
L/R: Last year’s finalists Steph Blackwell, David Atherton and Alice Fevronia. Pic: C4/Love Productions
Ms Webb-Lamb added that while the show will be operating under virus rules, “on screen it will feel like Bake off” and that it was an “incredible feat from Love Productions to pull it off”.
She said Channel 4 has already been able to get the vast majority of its big shows back into production, or about to go back into production.
“I certainly felt that working to ensure Bake Off was back on the screen was such an important thing for us as a channel, such an important thing for the audience and Love Productions were just full of ingenuity and determination to get it to happen,” she added.
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This year’s series was due to begin filming in April after it was announced that new co-host Matt Lucas would replace outgoing Sandi Toksvig, joining Noel Fielding and judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood in the Bake Off tent.
The Great British Bake Off is expected to return to Channel 4 later in 2020.