Opinion
Think you know what cake looks like? ‘Is It Cake? Holiday’ will have you questioning everything.
The most incredible thing about Netflix program Is It Cake? is that it took until 2022 for it to be made.
It’s hard to imagine, but for thousands of years of human civilisation, we had no formal, systematic way of determining whether something was cake. We just had to stumble blindly through life knowing that anything might be cake, but possessing no guide to help us make the call.
It’s pretty funny, really, that Netflix has set its hype machine to pumping a show called Stranger Things, while at the same time hosting a show on which things happen that are stranger than anything you’ll see on that show. For Is It Cake? is a television phenomenon that is at the same time the strangest thing you’ve ever seen and the missing piece of your life that you never realised you needed until you watched it.
The premise of the show is, like all truly great concepts, terrifyingly simple.
Right now, the second season of the special Christmas edition, Is It Cake? Holiday, is streaming and bobbing around in Netflix’s top 10 shows of the week. It’s safe to say that outside Only Fools and Horses, no show has ever been better suited for festive indulgence.
The premise of the show is, like all truly great concepts, terrifyingly simple. Contestants bake cakes. Celebrity judges who you’ve never heard of then look at the cakes, and also at some other things, and decide which ones are cake. The winner is the one who is the best at tricking people into thinking their cake isn’t a cake.
To be clear, the cakes they bake are designed to look like other things – the judges don’t just compare a Black Forest gateau with, say, a live dachshund. This thing is actually a challenge because what Is It Cake? reveals is that if a
really good cake maker so desires, it’s possible for a cake to look a hell of a lot like a non-cake.
Toys, appliances, furniture, items of clothing – anything might be cake, and your judgment of whether it is or not is almost certainly less accurate than you reckon.
You might think, when you look at the Christmas tableau at the start of the series that it is very easy to determine which bits of the snow-covered roof and assortment of Santa-dropped goodies are edible. Prepare to be stunned!
Is It Cake? is hosted by Mikey Day, who you might know from Saturday Night Live, though let’s be honest – you probably don’t. Day has many strengths as a host, mainly that he is funny, irreverent, completely aware of the surrealist dreamscape he is overseeing, and yet completely sincere in his passion for the project. He also does well at not pulling focus from the stars of the show – the bakers and their fiendishly disguised desserts.
Is It Cake? is an amusing show, and a bracingly upbeat one – everyone is having fun, and though there are cash prizes on the line, nobody ever seems to be under too much stress or in a state of panic.
In a 21st-century sea of sadness, this is one of those little islands where you
can sit and enjoy the sweet, jolly, ridiculous things in life. But more than that, Is It Cake? is a profound exercise in expanding horizons: a demonstration that the world is more beautiful, more wondrous, and a lot more cakey, than you ever imagined.
It is impossible to look at a line-up of five ornamental giraffes, or wooden stumps and axes, knowing that one of them is a cake but not knowing which one, and not be struck with the realisation that the universe is a place of magic and mystery, far bigger and more ineffable than anyone in the pre-Is It Cake? times could have suspected.
You won’t be the same after seeing Is It Cake? You will suddenly find yourself living in a world where literally anything you see might be cake. And that will enrich your life beyond belief.
Is It Cake? Holiday season 2
Watch it if: You love brilliant baking, profound joy and delectable deception. Also cake.
Don’t watch it if: You do not wish your soul to be uplifted by the astounding potential of human ingenuity.
Sizzle rating: Five figgy puddings − SIZZLIN’!
Stream it: Netflix
