What a view | TV shows for fashion lovers, from The Great British Sewing Bee Season 8 to Netflix’s Bridgerton and Atelier
- The competition is formidable and the tasks arduous, plentiful and imaginative in series eight of the extremely watchable The Great British Sewing Bee
- Bridgerton offers Regency thrills and frills, Hello Tomorrow! retro-futurism and Downton Abbey Edwardian frocks and gowns; Atelier slyly sends up lingerie
The success – or failure – of reality-television shows is arguably decided long before the cameras roll on any paradise isle or in any fractious kitchen.
Choosing a winning combination of competitors, with guaranteed viewer preferences among them, is essential; it is also part of what makes series eight of The Great British Sewing Bee (BBC Lifestyle, from Friday) so watchable.
Do reality shows remain popular for so many series because of the everyman, “that could be me” feeling in the viewer?
The 12 amateur sewers (pronounced “so-ers”) who assemble in a former mill in England’s Yorkshire, once a global textile nerve centre, represent a wide societal cross-section, which makes it easy to spot and cheer on a favourite: perhaps Hong Kong native Woo Man-yee.
The competition, however, is formidable and the tasks arduous, plentiful and imaginative, requiring much textile alchemy and, er, stitches in time.
