Some Britishisms, for levity’s sake

Revisiting the “comfort watch,” with Covid back in the news.

Kim-Joy, Rahul and Ruby — three of my all-time favorites

For many years, when I was running both a small business and a 5-days-a-week blog, I would decompress at night with an episode of Friends before bed. I was obviously not alone. Whatever broadcast channel it was that ran back-to-back late-night reruns would just cycle through the seasons, starting over each time it reached that final scene, and I just would watch whatever ep was playing. (Although, admittedly, I would sit out those unfortunate early eps with Ross’s pet monkey.) During Covid, this of course became an exceedingly common and well-studied practice: the comfort watch. Everyone, it seemed, had something they watched that they’d seen (maybe multiple times) before, because we all needed the safe space of a story we already knew the ending to. Exactly the way small children want the same book read to them at bedtime over and over.

At my house during Covid, instead of a known outcome, what we needed was British accents. No idea why. We watched every costume-laden period movie and series available on streaming services — comedies and dramas, high and low art, things we’d seen before and those we hadn’t. It didn’t need to be especially good, certainly didn’t have to be historically accurate, it just needed costumes and accents.

Since then, my more occasional comfort re-watch has been something else entirely: The Great British Baking Show, which we just call “the bake-off” even though they’re not allowed to use the proper British title (The Great British Bake-Off, aka GBBO) when airing it in the US. (Thanks, Pillsbury.) I’ll watch any ep, any time. I don’t care how recently I’ve seen it. They don’t need to be in order, or from any particular season. It doesn’t really matter that the first few seasons have disappeared from Netflix — there are still plenty to pick from whenever a day in this world of ours has driven me mad (they would say “mental”) and I just want to watch people being kind to each other while attempting to make delicious pastry on unrealistic deadlines. While, of course, speaking in an impressive array — a veritable pastry case — of British dialects.

But it’s not just the sweet people or the lovely accents. It’s the expressions. So on a day when I’m recovering from a vaccine shot* and the latest news cycle has given us Dr. Fauci himself pleading the fifth in front of Congress as Rand Paul tries to sell the story that he — Fauci — was behind Covid all along, I give you as a counterpoint this cheerful list of phrasings from the bake-off worth integrating into your daily life, for variety and levity:

1. instead of “terrible” say “pants”
2. instead of “I’m nervous” try “feel like I’ve got a sweat on”
3. instead of “when I was a kid” go with “when i was wee”
4. instead of “i need to hurry” use “i’ve gotta get a wiggle on”
5. and everyone’s favorite, instead of “oh my god” there’s “oh my giddy aunt”

I’m always amazed when people tell me they’ve never seen the show, and I’m deeply jealous that you have it all ahead of you. If that’s you, while they’re all good (except maybe the Covid bubble season, if I’m honest), I suggest starting with what’s called Collection 6 in Netflix, which contains several of my personal favorite bakers, including the three pictured above.

And the 17th season is coming in September. If you want to have watched it all ahead of time, you’d best get a wiggle on! There’s absolutely no reason to do so, I just wanted to say that.

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[IMAGE: Publicity still from the 2018 season of The Great British Bake-Off]

*It’s not Covid but the shingles shot, which I didn’t want to get, but then people in my life got shingles and I want that even less than I wanted the shot.