Yuletide telly is often credited with providing “festive cheer”, but if you’re lucky enough to be able to do Christmas properly, that’s not the time when you need a screen to pep up your outlook. New Year cheer is what we want – something to brighten the days in early January when the needles have fallen off the tree, the whisky cream has crusted and the darkness outside is forbidding. Step forward Taskmaster’s New Year Treat, an annual bonus from a show that reliably lightens one’s mood.
These one-offs are meant to give non-comedians a chance to play, the theory being that people who aren’t funny professionally wouldn’t be able to sustain a season. The new year roster does, however, have a couple of cheats up its sleeve. Lenny Rush of Am I Being Unreasonable? and Dodger fame, for example, is a comic actor and therefore is funny professionally: a whole season would only be a big ask because he is 14.
