TV review: Taskmaster; Brits Behind Bars

This new comedy panel show, like a laconic Generation Game, is funny, revealing, and glorious
 Greg Davies hosts Taskmaster, a new twist on the panel-show format
 Greg Davies hosts Taskmaster, a new twist on the panel-show format
UKTV

Taskmaster
Dave
*****

Brits Behind Bars
ITV
**

Can you judge someone by how they eat a lobster? The flamboyant Michael Grade once had lunch with John Birt, later the BBC’s steely director-general. It was, Grade said, like watching a pathologist in action. Can you learn something from the way someone kills a pig? In Jude the Obscure the local girl, Arabella, did so slowly. Jude, the would-be intellectual, wished to get it over and done with. My old tutor Craig Raine thought Hardy was pointing us to their sexual preferences.

Now, what can you take from a comedian’s approach to eating a watermelon? Maybe not so much, but it was very funny to watch five of them have a go on the new panel