Netflix wanted to poach The Great British Bake Off but was ‘too slow off the mark’

Netflix was interested in acquiring The Great British Bake Off, one of its bosses has revealed.

The former hit BBC show was snapped up by Channel 4 recently in a deal reportedly worth £75 million.

But the streaming service’s chief content officer has said it would have loved to have poached the programme.

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“We knew it was brewing, but I didn’t actually think it would happen,” said Ted Sarandos, who admitted to the Radio Times that Netflix was slow off the mark to try to acquire Bake Off.

While Channel 4 may have pinched the cooking programme, Netflix had previously taken its own slice of Channel 4 by acquiring the third series of dark drama Black Mirror.

Six new episodes of Charlie Brooker’s show have just landed on the service.

After Black Mirror moved to Netflix, Channel 4’s chief creative officer Jay Hunt said the programme “couldn’t be a more Channel 4 show”.

He added: “We grew it from a dangerous idea to a brand that resonated globally.”

But Mr Sarandos said creator Brooker was the real force behind Black Mirror.

“I think Charlie Brooker would take great exception to the notion that they developed the show,” he said.

“That is the work of Charlie Brooker, who is a brilliant television creator, and the ambitions that he and (executive producer) Annabel Jones had for the new season were… seemingly out of reach or beyond the appetite that Channel 4 had for the show.

“So they cancelled it. And we picked it up.”

(Picture: Rex)