Your Time Starts Now: Channel 4 Orders New At-Home Gameshow From Taskmaster Creator Alex Horne

Image: Ch4

By Jon Donnis

Channel 4 has commissioned a full series of Your Time Starts Now, a new play-at-home gameshow devised and developed by Taskmaster creator and host Alex Horne and Andy Devonshire.

Following a successful pilot, the broadcaster has ordered an eight-part series, with each episode running for 60 minutes. The format takes the spirit of the Taskmaster universe and brings it into viewers' homes, challenging households across the UK to take on a series of deliberately devious tasks without ever leaving home.

The new show builds on Horne's previous at-home formats, including The Button, which he devised and narrated in 2018, and HomeTasking, created during the 2020 lockdown as an attempt to keep audiences entertained while people were confined to their homes.

Your Time Starts Now will see five teams made up of friends and families compete against one another, with each household required to demonstrate creativity, lateral thinking, speed, knowledge and teamwork. As with Taskmaster, the challenges are designed to test how contestants approach problems, rather than simply how quickly they can complete them.

There is also a potentially significant financial incentive. Every task comes with a cash reward, while the household with the most money at the end of each episode must decide whether to take their winnings or risk them by playing for double the amount the following week.

That decision could prove particularly tempting as the series progresses, with the format offering the possibility of a cash prize running into millions by the end of the series.

With Horne and Devonshire behind the format, Your Time Starts Now looks set to take the inventive, unpredictable spirit of Taskmaster and apply it to a much larger group of contestants, with ordinary households across the UK becoming the players.

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."