Still watching
An odd little one, this. It’s perfectly fine, some decent enough jokes, the plot moves along nicely. But that’s… it? It feels like a waste of Mark Heap and Dawn French to make something so grounded. It’s missing a spark to properly ignite it into something good. It sometimes feels like Simon Mayhew-Archer - who does, to his credit, an awful lot to raise awareness around Parkinsons - set out to make a comedy that included a good representation of Parkinsons, and then once that was achieved (which it was, Heap’s character gets a lot of good moments around that), didn’t really push much beyond that. A shame for the loss of potential, but maybe a second series could double down.
After a really solid year of Taskmaster with series 19 and 20, maybe the best back to back pair for some time, it’s a disappointing New Year’s Treat to start off 2026. The contestants themselves are fine, but everything else around it is the worst parts of Taskmaster dialled up to 11, with Alex Horne at his most weird/fetish/fan-service-y.
Still watching
Still watching