Junior Taskmaster, review: great fun – so long as you like children

Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak take Greg Davies and Alex Horne’s place for a kid-friendly update on Channel 4’s runaway comedy hit

4/5

This review of Junior Taskmaster (Channel 4) comes with a caveat: you need to like children in order to enjoy this show. And not just any children, but children aged 9-11. That’s a very particular age. They veer between deadpan asides and giggling fits. They can surprise you with their depth of knowledge and amazing lack of common sense within the same minute. They’re part-genius, part-idiot. I should know, I have two of them.
With all that in mind, this pint-sized version of the mighty Taskmaster format is great fun. I watched it with the aforementioned offspring just to make sure that they agreed. In place of the regular show’s overlord Greg Davies and his assistant Alex Horne, we have Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak. Matafeo is an appealing host. She is warm and smiling, but still pokes fun at her guests. They can take it, and probably would have been fine with Davies’s approach too – his hosting style is a hit with all the young Taskmaster viewers I know.
Wozniak is the show’s great strength. Fans of the original series will know him as one of its funniest contestants. Here, he brings out the best in the kids, never talking down to them and remaining poker-faced regardless of the scenario, even when one of those scenarios involves a child drawing on his face.
Taskmaster is such a winningly juvenile show, it’s a surprise that a junior version took this long. The tasks in the first episode included throwing things into a top hat being worn by Wozniak on a giant turntable; identifying things hidden in five piles of mashed potato (they could eat one, sniff one, lick one, put their little finger in one, and throw one on the floor); and hitting a target “in the most impressive way”. All of these could transfer quite easily to the adult version of the show, which is essentially Crackerjack for stand-up comedians.
The only minor tweak to the format is that there are heats, each featuring five children, with the best eventually making it through to the final. One of the kids in the launch episode was called Lazer, which you have to respect. The studio audience, being mostly made up of their family members, cheers and applauds at absolutely everything, which is the only bit I found annoying.
And these children are smart, deploying the kind of ingenuity and lateral thinking that you find in the adult series. They share in each other’s triumphs and don’t appear to take their disasters too seriously. It’s sweet, cheerful, and has inspired me to stage the mashed potato game the next time I organise a children’s party.

3/5

4/5

4/5