Channel 4 Pilots Alex Horne's New Play-at-Home Gameshow Your Time Starts Now

Image: Ch4

By Jon Donnis

Channel 4 is piloting a new play-at-home gameshow, Your Time Starts Now (working title), created and developed by Alex Horne and Andy Devonshire. Set within the Taskmaster universe, the new format will see households across the UK competing against one another by completing a series of inventive tasks without ever leaving their homes.

Horne, the creator and host of the BAFTA and Rose d'Or-winning Taskmaster, reunites with Devonshire, the founding Series Director on shows including The Apprentice, The Great British Bake Off and Taskmaster, to bring the new concept to life.

Your Time Starts Now builds on ideas first explored in Horne's earlier projects, including The Button, which aired on the BBC in 2018, and HomeTasking, the online series created to entertain audiences during the 2020 lockdown. The new gameshow challenges five teams of friends and families from around the UK to put their creativity, teamwork, speed, lateral thinking and general knowledge to the test as they take on Horne's typically devious tasks from their own homes.

The format follows the critical success of The Button, which received praise for its original approach to the gameshow genre. Reviewers described it as a genuinely interesting new concept, with others highlighting its addictive nature and the way it found originality by transforming ordinary living rooms into the setting for the competition.

HomeTasking also attracted a global audience, receiving more than six million views on YouTube. The series was watched in 125 countries, reaching viewers from the UK and the US to Moldova and Mongolia.

Your Time Starts Now continues Alex Horne's exploration of home-based entertainment, with five teams of friends and families competing through a series of creative challenges that test their speed, teamwork, knowledge and lateral thinking without ever leaving their homes.

Alex Horne, creator and host, said: "I've had the pleasure of being in the room while countless comedians have tried and usually failed on Taskmaster and I've learnt that for the most part, that lot are sneaky loveable idiots. With Your Time Starts Now, I'm now excited and intrigued to see how the rest of the country can cope doing simple things under the pressure of time-constraints, dogged rivals and my own snarky gaze. Good luck people of the UK. I shall be watching."