Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

Pop CultureAugust 25, 2022

Meet the bakers on the new season of The Great Kiwi Bake Off

Staff writer
Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

It’s back and more delicious than ever. Tara Ward introduces the new faces baking their way to glory on The Great Kiwi Bake Off.

Unclench your ladyfingers and sort out your soggy bottoms, The Great Kiwi Bake Off is back. Tonight, 10 new amateur bakers will enter the GKBO barn hoping to surprise us with their sponges and dazzle us with their donuts over a series of tricky challenges that will take them far beyond their baking comfort zones.

The bakers aren’t the only newbies this season. Comedian Pax Assadi joins Hayley Sproull to present the show, while chef Peter Gordon and Jordan Rondel (The Caker) replace Sue Fleischl and Dean Brettschneider as judges. The ingredients might be different and butter might cost eight bucks a block these days, but the GKBO recipe remains a comfort TV classic. Season four is about to deliver us a fresh serving of nice people making nice things, at a time when we’ve never needed it more.

This year’s GKBO team: Peter Gordon, Hayley Sproull, Pax Assadi and Jordan Rondel (Photo: TVNZ)

These creative cooks are ready to pour their heart and soul into a bowl and beat it until it splits in front of the nation, but who are they, really? We dived into the bakers’ official GKBO profiles and poked around their social media profiles, only to discover that this season features some big talent and even bigger dreams. Let them eat cake!

Hugo

Hugo, 28, Wellington (Photo: TVNZ)

Hugo grew up in the UK but spent his childhood baking traditional Kiwi treats with his mum. This public servant from Wellington bakes to bring joy to others, and wants to show how much fun baking can be. Sure, but how are his pastry swans and spongey balls? The nation needs to know.

What’s baking: This intriguing banana bread that appears to be smiling at the camera. A sign of good times ahead, or a carbohydrate with a wacky sense of humour? You decide.

WInners are grinners (Photo: @bussellingboutbakes Instagram)

Francesca

Francesca, 27, Wellington (Photo: TVNZ)

Francesca says she’s a baking nerd who frequently has disasters in the kitchen, and reckons she gets emotionally invested in her cakes. She’s the only contestant photographed not wearing an apron, suggesting she’s gone rogue before even cracking an egg. On behalf of all baking nerds, we salute her for it.

What’s baking: Francesca’s Instagram profile is a thing of wonder and I too have become emotionally invested in eating every single one of her incredible cakes.

Get in the sea (Photo: @bloombakes_ Instagram)

Brooke

Brooke, 28, Auckland (Photo: TVNZ)

Brooke’s first baking memory is getting her hair caught in the mixer, but these days she spends more time selling her homemade fudge and giving the proceeds to charity. There’s potential for both chaos and goodness at “Brookie’s Bakehouse”, and we love to see it more than a poo cake perched on a plinth of hopes and dreams.

What’s baking: The treats come thick and fast on Brooke’s Instagram, including this spectacularly long, thin Lolly Cake. No hair appears to be have been harmed in the making of this treat, which bodes well for the rest of the competition.

Put it in Te Papa (Photo: @brookiesbakeshouse Instagram)

Jonathan

Jonathan, 53, Auckland (Photo: TVNZ)

This Auckland-based sales manager “loves to bake”. Imagine if he didn’t! Now that would be a show.

What’s baking: Sadly, at the time of writing Jonathan’s ‘kiwimanbaker’ Instagram profile was set to private, so we may never know what cakey treats he’s been whipping up at home. Focaccia? We barely know him.

Nikita

Nikita, 27, Christchurch (Photo: TVNZ)

During her high school years, Nikita was renowned for making some kick-arse pineapple lump cupcakes, and now that she’s a lawyer in Christchurch she finds herself baking regularly for her colleagues.

What’s baking: This gem of a farewell cake, the gift that keeps on giving.

Bon appetit (Photo: @nik_day1995 Instagram)

Katrina Marie

Katrina Marie, 51, Christchurch (Photo: TVNZ)

Katrina Marie decided this year she’d be brave and make things happen, and now she’s standing in the kitchen where someone once made a cow udder out of jelly. As a former White Fern we can expect Katrina Marie to work well under pressure, though no word on whether she’ll attempt the classic Australian Women’s Weekly cricket pitch birthday cake.

What’s baking: This lemon passionfruit drizzy loaf looks both loafy and drizzy. Five stars, chef’s kiss.

Talk about a sticky wicket (Photo: @katbatbake Instagram)

Kee-Hee

Kee-Hee, 30, Auckland (Photo: TVNZ)

Piano teacher by day, baker by night, Kee-Hee’s passion for baking helps her relieve stress. Nobody remind her about the time last season’s winner Alby put 40 eggs into one cake, some of us are still not feeling relaxed about that.

What’s baking: Everything on Kee-Hee’s Instagram looks spectacular, but these Valentine’s Day cupcakes should go straight to the pool room. Star baker, heart breaker, get in our stomach immediately.

It’s a yes from me (Photo: @keeheescakery Instagram)

Lucas

Lucas, 27, Wellington (Photo: TVNZ)

Lucas is used to being creative and innovative in his work as a theatre set designer, but how will these skills translate in the kitchen when he’s asked to make 12 lamingtons, a Battenberg cake and a thousand scone sandwiches, all in one day?

What’s baking: Based on this spectacular croquembouche, Lucas has everything under control. A true Christmas miracle.

Good tidings to you all (Photo: @itislucasneal Instagram)

Monique

Monique, 35, Pahiatua (Photo: TVNZ)

Art teacher Monique says baking is her “happy place”, and when she’s not working on the family dairy farm, she’s creating treats in the kitchen. Monique wants to push the boundaries on GKBO, and as long as those boundaries are made of chocolate shards and salted caramel, everything should turn out fine.

What’s baking: Perfection on a plate.

Marry me (Photo: @thesneakybakernz Instagram)

Victoria

Victoria, 27, Wellington (Photo: TVNZ)

Victoria rediscovered her passion for baking during lockdown, and she loves “the chemistry, the stress and the looks on people’s faces” when she bakes. Did she love the look on Simon Bridges’ face when he made his own GKBO cake portrait with chocolate hail stubble? Only the buttercream knows the truth.

What’s baking: Anyone who makes a Love Island cake featuring Davide’s immortal words deserves to be Star Baker forever. Give Victoria the glass plate and shower her in hundreds and thousands, it is what it is.

My type on paper (Photo: @treatyoselfnz Instagram)

The Great Kiwi Bake Off premieres on Thursday 25 August at 7.30pm on TVNZ1 and streams on TVNZ+.

Follow our reality TV recap podcast The Real Pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

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One little cartridge changed gaming forever. (Design: Archi Banal)
One little cartridge changed gaming forever. (Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureAugust 25, 2022

How GoldenEye on Nintendo 64 defied the odds and redefined gaming

Contributing writer
One little cartridge changed gaming forever. (Design: Archi Banal)
One little cartridge changed gaming forever. (Design: Archi Banal)

It was expected to be another mediocre video game based on a movie. Instead it changed gaming forever. 25 years on, Sam Brooks remembers GoldenEye 007.

If you grew up in the 90s and had access to a Nintendo 64, you almost certainly played GoldenEye. If you played it enough, the phrase “Licence to Kill, slappers, Oddjob” is probably etched somewhere deep in your brain like a wake-up phrase for a sleeper agent. 

GoldenEye (officially GoldenEye 007), based on the 1995 James Bond film of the same name, is one of the most enduring games of the past 25 years. The first-person shooter with a robust multiplayer mode was an immediate critical hit, and went on to sell over eight million copies across the world, making the the highest-selling non-Mario game on the Nintendo 64. 

The name’s Bond, James Bond. If you squint.

Looking back, it’s important to remember that GoldenEye was released into a world that had almost zero expectations for it. The only thing more reviled than video games movies are movie video games; the stigma around licensed games still exists, but in the mid-90s it was pretty much assumed that any game based on a movie was going to be a terrible cash grab. To make things even less promising, multiple delays meant it ended up coming out so late that it was essentially promo for the next Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies.

At the time the first-person shooter was a genre that had yet to be a proven console success. It’s hard to imagine now, when first-person shooters are available on everything that can manage a video game, including your phone, but in 1997 they were pretty much a PC-only affair. This meant that you had to have a machine capable of running a game that demanded a lot of CPU, RAM and other acronyms. 

GoldenEye changed that – you could play it on any old Nintendo 64, because that’s how console games work. Not only that, but it handled beautifully (although compared to modern games, it handles closer to a rhinoceros than not). Without GoldenEye, we wouldn’t have Halo, without which we wouldn’t have Call of Duty, without which we probably wouldn’t have Fortnite, for better or worse.

GoldenEye had an uncommon attention to detail that made it a joy to play, and pioneered mechanics that are now standard in not just FPS shooters but video games in general. Details like a gun playing not just one stock sound when firing, but one of nine random sounds, are the kind of thing that made GoldenEye stand out. It was a game made with care, not just to cash in.

The bane of every Goldeneye player’s existence: Oddjob.

But the main thrill of GoldenEye didn’t come from its single player mode. The game’s campaign, which loosely retells one of the best, campest Bond films, is aggressively fine – although it has to be said that the level design, invoking real-life architecture, with rooms and spaces that served no in-game function but built a vibe, was years ahead of its time. Instead, the real thrill came from multiplayer mode.

That’s remarkable when you consider that multiplayer was added basically as an afterthought, just six months before release. It didn’t even require any additional assets – all the levels and all the models are in the campaign. It was included merely as a nice-to-have. Nobody could have predicted that it would become the game’s main draw.

Looking back, the multiplayer mode seems pretty barebones. The different kinds of matches, with rules based on Bond film titles – You Only Live Twice gives each player two lives, The Man With the Golden Gun adds the titular weapon into the mix, The Living Daylights is a capture the flag type situation – are pretty standard now. And the characters are pretty indistinct, with the only exception being Oddjob, due to his short stature – it gave him such an advantage the developers admitted that playing as the henchman was tantamount to cheating.

What really made the game special, in the same way as the N64’s similarly successful Mario Kart, was that it brought people together in the same space to play against each other in a way that was relatively accessible. To have a Nintendo 64 and four controllers definitely required a certain level of wealth, but it was still a lot easier than getting four PCs in the same room. It was a rush of thrill that you can’t get from Fortnite – no online experience can replicate seeing the whites of someone’s eyes as you knock them down with a slapper (literally a mannequin hand), killing them in the press of a button, knowing they’ll come back next round for revenge. 

More Reading

    GoldenEye doesn’t just represent nostalgia for a kind of gaming that put people in the same room, gathered around one screen, rather than scattered across the globe, sitting behind many screens. It also represents nostalgia for an entire gaming era, one before lootboxes, live service and constant patches and updates to a game. When you bought GoldenEye, you got the whole game, all it would ever be.

    That’s what made GoldenEye special. It wasn’t necessarily the game, as great as it is, but the memories you forged with it, with your mates, match after match.

    Pop Culture