Does The Horne Section TV Show count as a Taskmaster spin-off? After the books and interactive online games comes Taskmaster: The Sitcom? Well, not quite, I think the go-to term is 'semi-canonical'. But fans will be delighted to see that Greg Davies features in this too alongside Alex Horne, Horne's band The Horne Sextion, Desiree Burch and others.
The premise is both silly and simple. Having been bullied into playing second banana on Taskmaster by Davies, Horne wants a bit of hot leading man action himself. And he has the perfect idea. Make a sitcom based around him and his band and film it in his house. With secret weapon John Oliver too. So clever, so daft, Channel 4 is bound to go for it.
There's lots of intertextuality here in the first episode with fact and fiction rubbing together nicely. A meeting with the C4 commissioning editor portrays the channel as every bit as cynical as one imagines TV channels to be. They want a hip, lit, young programme, but by pressing the wrong key they accidentally commission a pilot from Horne by mistake...
If you love the way Horne mixes arch cleverness and self-deprecating humour you'll love the Horne Section TV Show. And if you are new to Horne you will still love it. As with Taskmaster, this is a programme for all the family. At times it has a surreal cartoonish feel to it, with running gags and throwaway references. Horne's wife is unseen in the first episode apart from a pair of legs, a cross between Her Indoors from Minder and the maid from Tom And Jerry.
Greg Davies is good too, sending up his onscreen bossiness with shades of Extras - he's lovely in front of an audience, a demanding, tyrannical brute 'off-camera'. But for once this actually is Horne's show and he has plenty of opportunities to bag the big laughs. Oh, and the band play some pretty good music too. As John Oliver concurs in the show, everything is improved by music.
Read an interview with Alex Horne here
The Horne Section TV Show is available on All 4 from 3rd November and will air weekly on Channel 4 from Thursday 17th November at 10pm
