According To Paul Hollywood, The 'GBBO' Challenges Could Be Seeing A Major Change Next Series

Seeing celebs brave The Great British Bake Off kitchen is a highlight of British telly, but nothing beats watching amateur bakers showcase their immense talents. Starting next Tuesday (Aug. 27), series 10 of GBBO will see a batch of new faces enter the famous tent to master the signature, technical, and showstopper challenges. Although it seems there might be a slight change this series in the way these challenges are approached, according to one of the judges. In a recent interview with Metro, Paul Hollywood acknowledged the GBBO challenges can be tricky, and it's something that will be addressed this year.

"It's been interesting to come up with some unusual things this year — the challenges I think have been scaled back a little bit," Hollywood told the newspaper. "I thought sometimes we've been running away with some of the challenges being too difficult."

"On series one, people could approach them and make them and want to enjoy making them. But if you make them too difficult people will go not interested, 'I was with you right up until that point and then you've lost me'."

Co-judge Prue Leith agrees, mentioning how even "the most seasoned baker" can face a lot of difficulty with the challenges they are presented. "Sometimes you can see a baker in the beginning and you think he or she will be fantastic and just walk it," Leith said. "And it's quite worrying because you don't really want somebody to just gallop ahead. [But] they all at some point do really badly, so there's sort of a seesaw and it's really confusing."

While there are no hints at what these new challenges will entail, it's pretty clear that this series is going to be fantastical. Last week, Channel 4 published the first promo image for series 10, which has some serious Alice in Wonderland vibes. Whether or not this will have any influence on the interior of the tent or the challenges themselves is unknown, but it would be amazing to see some Wonderland-inspired showstoppers.

Channel 4 also released a teaser trailer for the series, which starred none other than the Cookie Monster. Here's hoping that he appears in some way this year because I would give anything to see that iconic muppet as a guest judge.

While I become preoccupied with imagining the Cookie Monster overseeing biscuit week, you can still catch up on all things Bake Off if next Tuesday is just too long to wait. While the original Bake Off that aired on BBC isn't available on iPlayer, all the series that have been on Channel 4 are available to watch on All4. You can also be delightfully entertained by the two series of The Great Celebrity Bake Off for SU2C, and also the festive specials. Basically, it's a whole lotta Bake Off that you can enjoy to your heart's content.

So whether you're new to the Bake Off scene or you just need a refresher, you've got until next Tuesday to indulge yourself in one of Britain's most beloved competition programmes.