Sorry, Peep Show Bake Off – I’d rather just watch the sitcom ...Middle East

The Great British Bake Off is made for Christmas. Light, fluffy and anodyne, it’s the sort of inoffensive, low-stakes stuff that is all you can quite bring yourself to watch after you’ve rounded off your fifth meal of the day with eight soggy-bottomed mince pies and a row with your mother.

Yet if like me you like a little edge to your eggnog, this year’s Christmas special has been given a significant upgrade, featuring the cast of one of the best and bleakest British comedies ever made: Peep Show.

It’s not new for familiar faces from beloved Channel 4 shows to be invited to the tent – the stars of Derry Girls and It’s a Sin have already had a go. There seems to be no particular reason that this year it’s the turn of Mark, Sophie, Dobby, Super Hans and Big Suze – sorry, I mean David Mitchell, Olivia Colman, Isy Suttie, Matt King and Sophie Winkleman – but as a Peep Show super fan, I was glad to see them reunited.

Except for the fact that Robert Webb, who played Jeremy opposite Mitchell’s Mark, was nowhere to be seen. They acknowledged this at the beginning of the episode, but it doesn’t soften the loss.

There was a rich seam to be mined here: would the bakers be asked to make “four naans”? A brown loaf and a white loaf for main course and pudding? The perfect rye bread from Hastings? Then, of course, there’s the famous Christmas episode – “NO TURKEY?! YOU F***ING IDIOT, JEREMY, YOU TOTAL F***ING IDIOT, THAT WAS YOUR JOB, YOU F***ING MORON” – endlessly quotable and purpose-built for baking challenges.

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Perhaps wisely, producers opted not to dive too far into the Peep Show jokebook (I did wonder if they might be asked to make a cake in the shape of a charred dog’s leg, but alas), preferring instead to let the cast’s personalities do the work. They were asked to make Christmas biscuits for the signature challenge, turkey pies for the technical – offering an opportunity to clip the famous scene, minus the expletives – and a Peep Show scene on a cake for the showstopper.

These brilliant actors and comedians are, of course, great fun – all slightly bemused to be there and leaning heavily into the show’s signature irony. Colman was competitive yet bashful (she hides her Oscar at the back of a bookshelf, she revealed, but was delighted to win the technical challenge); Winkleman droll and self-deprecating (“poor little things, they’re hideous,” she said of her turkey pies).

King was laid-back and mysterious, doing ironic to-camera looks while Mitchell was flustered and uptight (“I hate it when they just want you to use your judgement,” he said, frustrated at his second run at celebrity Bake Off). Suttie was the most down-to-Earth and normal of the lot.

Despite some funny moments, like a couple of much coveted Hollywood handshakes (“I felt feelings that are not appropriate pre-watershed,” said Winkleman) and “total pie collapse”, the short clips of Peep Show interspersed with the baking were by far the best bits.

Luckily we got plenty of reminders of the show’s brilliance in the showstopper round, including Super Hans accidentally running to Windsor, Mark burying Sophie in a ballpit and the eternal debate about whether cauliflower is traditional, with a mix of abilities both artistic and culinary.

The Great Christmas Bake Off might be just what you need on Christmas evening after a day of overindulgence. But – if you’ve got the stomach – I’d recommend going back to the Peep Show instead.

‘The Great Christmas Bake Off’ is streaming on Channel 4

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