I’ve just completed the first series of Junior Taskmaster, and can officially say it was a triumph. To be fair, I always knew that’d be the case. The Taskmaster team, led by producer Andy Devonshire, are some of the hardest-working and in-tune people in television, and they’ve not put a foot wrong in nearly a decade. They turned the challenges of Covid into an opportunity to expand the fanbase through Home Tasking, and then devised one of the best brand licensing strategies I’ve seen for any TV show ever, which has included books, board games, video games, the People’s Podcast and the recently opened Live Experience in Canada Water, which I’ve attempted and left with my dignity just about intact. I kept my trousers on the whole time, I promise.
However, this latest iteration could easily have been a disaster. Format spin-offs involving kids while aimed at a general audience have not performed as well in the UK as they would in places like Eastern Europe, Latin America or the US, where children are loved as little gems that represent hope for the future. In the UK, children are annoying creatures who ruin our lives, and must be seen, not heard. Paul McKenna used to perform two versions of a trick where he'd hypnotise a champion arm wrestler to lose every match for a month. In the US, he’d have him beaten by a 10-year-old boy, but in the UK, he’d have him beaten by an 80-something woman from a care home who had no clue where she was. The popular thinking is children are too happy, and jar with the British cultural constant that life is bleak and always will be. By contrast, we venerate the elderly. That may be why The Voice Kids has just been cancelled in the UK, or the British version of Junior Masterchef was binned off after barely a series, while it’s had dozens of editions in the US and Spain.
Where this show found success was that it felt authentic, and not a massive deviation from the original brand. All the tasks felt like they could have been in the adult series (side note: it always makes me snigger when people talk about the ‘adult’ version of a show in relation to the junior one, e.g. ‘Adult Taskmaster’ or ‘Adult Bake Off’, because it makes the original format sound like a sex chat line), and its biggest strength was that it wasn’t saccharine, and didn’t talk down to the kids. In that way, it leaned into the kind of organised chaos that comes so naturally to children that you’d have seen on the best Saturday morning kids’ shows like Live & Kicking or Dick & Dom in da Bungalow, and, like the latter, interspersed the kids’ humour with the odd adult joke. One task involved the kids having to “turn over all the stones in the caravan”, which included a cushion with Sharon Stone’s face on and an album by Joss Stone. You knew the kids wouldn’t get it, but it was a nice little nod to the sensibilities of the original series, which is, despite its popularity with the younger generation, aimed first at an older audience. In the same vein, Mike Wozniak calling the children ‘little gits’ in a planned Freudian slip from ‘little gifts’ might have even been a bit too on-the-nose for foul-mouthed chaos lovers Dick & Dom, who still revel in the fact they used to say ‘flap crackers' and 'clock hangers’ on kids’ TV to this day.
Speaking of Mike Wozniak, I couldn’t have thought of anyone better to have cast as the Taskmaster’s assistant, a man described by companion podcast host Ed Gamble as someone with the energy of a “cartoon adult in a kids’ book”. Visually, he looks authoritative, with his three-piece suit, glaring gaze and on-point bushy moustache, but as soon as he starts speaking, the veneer is gone, and he’s revealed to be a very silly man, but in an utterly serious way, which is an energy that kids love. They recognise how fragile his authority is early on, meaning most of them end up treating him as a human punching bag, which is fantastic to watch.
It also makes me chuckle that Woz's rise to national stardom, born out of one of the greatest lines ever uttered on British TV: "It's an absolute casserole down there", was down to his accidentally pushing out of a haemorrhoid, and now he has a gig on a primetime show cast for kids. Shoutout to all the parents who had to explain that to their kids who are fans of this wholesome family format.
As for the Taskmaster herself, Rose Matafeo plays the role to a tee as well. While she spoke on the podcast of her fear of being harsh on children, this didn’t come across in the show. Yes, the early episodes do contain a lot of the ‘compliment sandwiches’, as Rose softens the blow with a “good effort, but…” kind of comment, through the semi-finals and the final, as she gets to know the kids, and what they can handle, a lot better, she’s not afraid to blankly say “that was rubbish”, or, on one occasion, when a contestant got a clap for their prize, responded: “it deserved that golf clap”.
To be honest, it may have surprised some viewers just how headstrong these kids were. All of them took the 1-point putdowns far better than some adult contestants (not naming any names, but it has an L and an S in it), and when they were knocked out, they were all really supportive of their peers and were visibly congratulating them at the end. While they were probably briefed about the format of the show beforehand, it was clear that several of them were either fans or had seen it before, especially 9-year-old Anita, who accidentally called Mike “Alex” in one of the iconic moments of the series.
While it may have seemed brutal to have had a knockout system in each episode, with most contestants going out after just one, this format change was also a triumph. It meant that 25 kids got their moment in the limelight, rather than just 5 ailed comedians / live TV scroungers in the main series, and also, it avoided the inevitable fact that children get fatigued very quickly, which is evident enough by the older contestants in the adult series (*snigger*), who mentally clock out after 6 to 7 eps. Also, as was revealed on the Taskmaster podcast by Little Alex Horne himself, every kid in the heats got to do all the tasks that also featured in the semi-finals while they were on location, with only the finalists having to return, so every competitor will have felt like they got the most out of the experience, even if their efforts were never broadcast.
It may have made every point scored all the more important, but if the running total and worries about chances of qualifying affected the performance of any kid in the live task at the end of the show, this wasn’t evident. In the fourth episode, an utterly convoluted live task that involved making toilet roll towers descended into out-and-out Bedlam when almost angelic 9-year-old Billy exclaimed “I know a trick”, before chucking a loo roll in the direction of opponent Jamie’s tower, but accidentally on purpose whacking him in the face with it. The entire task broke down after this point, with bog rolls flying everywhere and Rose being left powerless to do anything but just sit there and say “no, be civil!” It brought to mind a hilarious moment in the first main series when Tim Key and Romesh Ranganathan fought over a balloon, as Alex tries to intervene by shouting “Stop it!” repeatedly, like a supply teacher who’s lost all control.
And that’s what this show gets absolutely right, and other kids spin-offs of other shows have been guilty of getting wrong: these are kids. Yes, they’re special, and have been selected by their teachers because their personalities are suited to the format, but they’re ordinary, common or garden, knee-high-to-a-rubber-duck infants who you’d come across in any shopping centre in the country, dragged around by their parents on a Saturday afternoon. They’re not RADA-trained, they’re not just there because Mummy wants them to have their big break, most of them probably don’t even have Spotlight membership. They’re there to have fun, they’re chaotic, they speak and think their age, and the show leans into the simple fact that it’s very funny to watch a child not think and chuck toilet rolls aimlessly at their peers. It’d be disgraceful to see an adult do that willy nilly. Ha, ‘willy’.
Despite the very narrow age gap of 9-11 (“Mr. President, a second child has hit the Taskmaster”), every competitor is completely unique in their approach to tasks, and every stock character from your school days is present: the cutesy teacher’s pet, the nerdy video game-obsessed boys who’ve definitely planted itching powder in the teachers’ jackets when they went to lunch, the pretty girl who’s actually hyper-smart and has the best comebacks, the mummy’s boys and girls, the maths whizzes, the conventionally ‘cute’ blond-haired, blue-eyed little darlings who’ve clearly got repressed trauma and might grow up and murder someone, they’re all there.
Ed Gamble took great pride on the official podcast in comparing himself to Reuben from Episode 5, a charming yet cheeky little Scottish scamp who had the energy of a child whose school report reads “very bright but needs to focus on his work”. While his chaotic nature, tendency to antagonise Rose and Mike and manifesto of “cause as much trouble as possible” left him with little chance of winning, he was a pleasure to watch, especially when he couldn’t contain his delight at the adult hosts playing along with his silly games, like kindly neighbours who’ve had next door’s kids siphoned off on them at the weekend because Mum’s at her limit. My best friend growing up was a Reuben, and I still thank him for the influence he had on me, because I was the complete opposite.
The competitor who approached it most like my childhood self was 11-year-old Finley, who won Episode 3. He struck me as the sort of headstrong, self-assured child who takes everything extremely seriously, never gives himself a break, and, while generally competent, gets easily flustered when things go wrong, sort of like a mini version of Jon Richardson trying to impress a lord mayor, or Brian from The Breakfast Club. The fact he had the attire, expression and monotone voice of someone 30 years older than him really aided his delivery, filling the role of the “old man who doesn’t want to be there” contestant you see in all of the main series of Taskmaster, despite still being at primary school. Amazingly, he was also responsible for one of the most genuinely adorable moments of the series, when he explained to Rose that, upon being asked to select a letter of the alphabet at random in one task, he picked L “because I have an amazing little sister called Lily”. In that moment, the holier-than-thou, hyper-competitive facade he’d been projecting dropped, and he was revealed for who he really was: a sweet, incredibly gifted little boy who’s clearly under a lot of pressure to nurture that gift.
I feared for him when it was revealed he was going to go out in the semi-final, because, while everyone was taking it so well, you could tell he was playing to win, and he had quite a vulnerable face. Luckily, I was wrong again – he’s still all smiles by the end. I guess that’s where the comparison stops in terms of how I’d have played the game. As well as the fact that I’d at least have been clever enough not to tape my hand shut and shout “I’m Batman!” for no reason whatsoever in the live task. I’m sure it made sense at the time. Anyway, that kid's going to be a star.
Maybe the reason everybody took losing so well is because they recognised that, in Taskmaster, you don’t have to win to be a champion. In fact, if you look at the main series, the archetypal contestant is almost always not the one who wins, but the one with the most memorable, memeable moments of comedic genius, or lateral thinking that would get a round of applause from Tom Scott. An example might be Mel Giedroyc, who, when asked to get a camel through the “smallest gap”, drove the toy camel out to a branch of Baby Gap just to run in and out with the camel in tow. It might be James Acaster, who put most of his chaotic energy into ranting at other contestants and getting told off by Greg, coming 4th overall but giving us so many iconic moments in the process.
Or, possibly my favourite example, it’s Joe Wilkinson, who, when told to eat an egg as fast as possible, made lunch. While other contestants were grappling with flash-frying and burning their mouths, or trying to stomach eating a raw egg, in saunters Joe from Gillingham with a tray, comprised of a perfectly scrambled egg, a crescent of sausage rolls, another crescent of salami doused in ketchup and an assortment of fizzy drinks. His exact line, as he ate the egg at his own leisure, was: “I knew I wasn’t going to win this one, so I thought I’d actually enjoy it”. The best thing about this was that he didn’t come last, earning 2 points after Katherine Ryan, in a rare moment of stuffiness, refused to eat the egg at all.
That quote alone truly sums up what Taskmaster is: the joy of not winning. And, at times, the joy of failing spectacularly. Yes, unlike panel shows, there are stakes: scoring controversies, stats that superfans mull over for years like cricket nerds, a slightly mediocre but altogether beautiful prize to win at the end. But, like any other panel game, the main point is to be funny. Series 15 contestant Frankie Boyle called the show “sadomasochism with tickling sticks”, theorising on the official podcast that Alex Horne created a show about hubris and self-humbling to counteract the huge egos that existed in the comedy sphere in the past. It also does this in a way that feels universal, a premise so simple that even kids can get involved and it feels totally natural. Junior Mock The Week just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Not that I’m applying a huge morality complex to a show where comedians play parlour games with eggs and rubber ducks, but it’s a lesson that, as an autistic adult who was once an autistic child, I could have done with. Autistic comedian and Series 14 contestant Fern Brady wrote in her autobiography¹ that Taskmaster was one of the most autism-friendly gigs she’s ever had in her career, because it’s a show that “values being yourself”. Through the show, she found a “pure happiness” in openly stimming while working out how to approach tasks, and in saying the first thing that came into her head rather than masking it and saying something more ‘correct’, “encouraged when it was met with laughs instead of derision”.
In the 26 years of my life leading up to when I watched Fern compete on Taskmaster, I’d never once seen the innate comedy that can be found in autistic joy, and was utterly delighted to see that many of Brady’s classic lines, such as “Did I meet these potatoes before?”, “You seem like you just eat roasts”, or just the sheer number of times she yelled “OH NO!” have cropped up on social media and on merchandise. It was one big celebration of the profound hilarity of autistic thinking, a rare occasion in mainstream media when the autistic person was given the agency to make the joke rather than being the butt of it.
When you grow up knowing you’re different but not why, spending every day of your life outside your home second-guessing every tiny thing you do and say, studying people’s faces and body language to make sure they accept you, what you say and how you act, and go out of your way to make sure they’re not confused or offended, you lose a huge sense of who you are. In my school days, I was constantly described as “a pleasure to have in class”, which basically meant I spent all my time quietly sat down, getting on with my work to escape the sensory input of my neurotypical peers, who’d bully anyone who dared to be the slightest bit interesting, and sucking up to the teachers who were far better fodder for infodumping. I was just getting through each day, trying to keep up the façade that I was in any way ‘normal’, which would inevitably crumble if the class was too loud, or the teacher started shouting because of this, at which point I’d start having a meltdown like a toddler. My peers, even into sixth-form, saw me as nothing more than a gentle teacher’s pet with thin skin whose only use was doing their homework for them in return for a free sausage roll or whatever.
I hated it, mostly because I now realise that’s not who I am. I’m chaotic, I’m cheeky, I like to get one over on people with witty remarks and find comedy in things people miss, even with my superiors. When I got to university, away from the constant woes of adult authority and testosterone-fuelled classroom banter, I first discovered the joy of having an entire room in the palm of your hand, laughing at something you’ve said, not because you’ve made a howling social mistake, but because the first thing you thought to say was hilarious. Like all my best moments, it was in a brass band rehearsal. When our conductor said that the dress code for a championship set, which was themed around childhood dreams (coincidently considering what we’re talking about), might involve pyjamas, I said, forgetting to use my indoor voice and saying, quite loudly and in a matter-of-fact way where I thought I wasn’t addressing the entire room: “I don’t wear pyjamas”. It was true, but it was also a classic autistic blunder that may have been judged very differently elsewhere. In a school setting, I’d probably have been given a detention, or worse, bullied by my peers who’d forever refer to me as the “sleeping pervert” or something. But I was in an environment that valued being yourself. What I actually got was a look of dismay from the conductor that said, in the most endearing way possible, “You dun wot, mate?!” and a rapturous laugh from the rest of the band, many of whom didn’t know me or my previous submissive relationship with authority. And it felt amazing.
I recognised this joy on multiple occasions in Junior Taskmaster, when children who don’t know how naturally funny their way of thinking is say something that gets a laugh, and then very obviously look in the direction of where their family is sitting in the crowd. I’d almost bet my house that at least a handful of these kids will go on to try stand-up when they’re older now they’ve got a taste of that feeling.
Anyway, for the next year, I was the class clown, the one who interrupted the teacher, the one making sardonic comments about other band members, the one who walked into a room to a look of “oh yeah, here he is again”. I’d hit my rebellious, inquisitive Reuben phase, a decade after most people do, but better late than never. It lasted all of 2 years, by which point the pressures of day-to-day executive functioning and feigning responsibility made me retreat somewhat back into my “pleasure to have in class” self, but the Durham University Brass Band was the first place I really felt comfortable to let go of the mask, to stim, to infodump, to look people almost in the eye and say: “This is me, and I don’t care if you like it or not”.
It also made me value the fact that my way of being was different but valid, and that I wasn’t ‘lacking’ anything. Autistic people tend to have very binary ways of thinking, and to some, namely me, if you’re not perfect all the time, you’re a complete failure, so will easily give up on something going slightly wrong rather than ploughing on. I was the stereotypical autistic kid who had constant meltdowns at Sports Day, and, to this day, and, despite having countless amazing experiences performing and touring with the Bromley Youth Concert Band, still fret about the fact I was never placed higher than Third Horn. And this is probably why Finley was my spirit animal – I recognised that child, because I’ve been there.
I’ll never know if having the opportunity to go on Junior Taskmaster would’ve sped up my process of unmasking, but I have to admit that, while I pissed myself laughing at lots of it, I also watched it with a background sense of sadness that this show didn’t exist when I was at primary school. One moment of amazing comedic timing in the series came when 11-year-old August, another academic and perfectionist, explained to Mike how he had an IQ of 120, higher than average for his age, just as the brick tower he’d been slaving away at for many minutes fell to the ground. Watching him gleefully laugh along with his failed attempt in the studio afterwards was an in-the-moment snapshot of a child realising that some of the best moments in life come from failure and not being the best at everything, in a way that comes across way clearer than any parent or teacher could explain.
From an early age, I was incredibly hard on myself when I didn’t perform well at even the most inconsequential tests, and I never gave myself a break. I was also constantly trying to act older than I was, in a way that would distract people from the fact that I was scared about functioning in a world that wasn’t made for me. I knew that my weaknesses would be where it’d all come undone. We were taught to “do your best”, not knowing that doesn’t mean “burn yourself out by trying to do the best you could ever do and failing miserably”. We’re told to use our “common sense”, which actually means “approach this like a neurotypical person would”. We were taught that wisdom is always favoured over knowledge in society, which, as someone with banks of useless knowledge about British TV and the Olympics, but no ability to wash a plate without cutting himself, made me feel completely useless.
That’s maybe why I was so enamoured by the prize tasks in Junior Taskmaster. Often an afterthought in the adult version, they were an especially rich feature in this version, because they give each child a flat-out minute or two in the limelight, as they explain why an object that’s often tied to their interests should get 5 points, basically a sanctioned form of infodumping. It reminds you that, when a child knows something, they know everything about it, and will let you know, just like we do to form an emotional connection with someone. I’d have spent hours asking Persia about her pigeons, or Olivia about her 'The Universe' book, or mini glam rockstar Lazer about his terrifying theory of puffball mushroom spores taking over the planet, in the same way I’d secretly hope people reciprocate when I start nerding off about, say, Eurovision.
I always felt mentally older than my peers when I was a child, probably because all my teachers were telling me I was “mature”. However, I don’t think I’ll ever mentally feel like an adult. I’ve accepted that I’m wired with too much whimsy. But if I’d had something like the environment Junior Taskmaster fostered when I was a child, I might have felt a bit less alone. An environment where kids learn the incredible power of making a room full of people laugh by being yourself. Where, while knowledge might get you noticed, wisdom is overrated, and, at times, not recommended. Where, although there is ultimately a prize, the main goal is to have fun, not make a big deal of anything and celebrate everyone’s individual way of thinking, being and trying, not to be the best, but their best self.
Taskmaster is a great leveller for comedians, who learn things about themselves in later life that they wish they’d had earlier, so to actually give a bunch of actual children these life lessons is something even more special, and a huge credit to its creators that goes beyond light entertainment in the rarest of ways.
¹ Brady, Fern (2023). Strong Female Character, Chapter 13