Britishness and Bake Off fuel Wizards of Baking bump

Leaning into the “Britishness” of shows like The Great British Bake Off as well as the underlying IP have helped Harry Potter: Wizards of Baking succeed in the streaming world, according to the show’s producer.

The cookery competition, which was commissioned by Warner Bros Discovery’s Food Network and SVoD Max, has quickly become a hit on the streamer, repeatedly featuring in its top 10 shows since it launched on Thursday 14 November.

It is also on course to become Food Network’s biggest show launch, with the opener drawing the channel’s highest Thursday night primetime rating for three years. 

The series has since been acquired by Amazon Prime Video in the UK and will launch on 17 December.

Broadcast has learned Prime Video will drop six episodes immediately, with the finale landing on 20 December, rather than Christmas Eve as was first planned. 

Stemming from an original concept by WBD exec Dan Sacks and fronted by Harry Potter film actors James and Oliver Phelps, the competition sees nine teams of pastry chefs and cake artists tasked to craft massive, spellbinding edible showpieces inspired by moments and themes from the Potter universe.  

It is co-produced by Warner Horizon and LA-based theoldschool (Bake Squad, The Final Table, Next in Fashion), founded and run by former Shine creative director of unscripted and Brit Robin Ashbrook, whose myriad credits include helping establish the MasterChef brand on Fox in the US. Sacks and Bridgette Theriault exec produce for Warner Horizon.

Wizards of Baking is showrun by fellow Brit, MasterChef alum and theoldschool colleague Yasmin Shackleton, and Ashbrook told Broadcast the pair’s UK production background has given it an extra edge. 

“If you ask a US audience what the biggest cooking show is on, say Netflix, it’s Bake Off. It’s not even one of ours like Bake Squad or The Final Table,” Ashbrook said. “Tonally, Bake Off is a very British show and it’s not changed for a US audience. In America, what that proves is [the British production] style works. And we speak that English TV production language. 

“Wizards of Baking was obviously a US-funded Max show, and we pitched it in the US with a US pre-production team, but as UK showrunners, it was incredibly important to us that we were shooting in the UK, at the original film sets in Leavesden, and used UK talent to shoot.  

“Harry Potter’s roots are built in Britishness, and that’s an integral part of the show.” 

Streaming premium 

Naturally, the Harry Potter brand is a big popularity driver, and Ashbrook admits he is “not naïve [enough] to say take out the Harry Potter IP and our show still wins”. 

But alongside a recognised brand, he is adamant that for cookery competitions and unscripted formats in general to work on streaming – where they have sometimes struggled to cut through – the show must be high-end at every level.

Theoldschool, which had previously produced Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses, was tasked with shaping Wizards of Baking’s format to maximise its cut-through. 

“The audience needs to feel a premium, well-produced show. The ideas that come and go are the ones that are thrown at the wall to see which sticks,” Ashbrook explained. “And they fail, IP or not.”

Format-wise, he adds: ”We don’t minimise the IP by doing multiple challenges in an episode, like typical cable cooking shows. One challenge is given a full ep.  

“And we were on a tightrope, needing to attract Harry Potter fans from all over the world as well as pure baking show fans.”

It seems the recipe has worked.