Greg Davies and Alex Horne will return to their golden thrones as they continue to test the competency of famous faces with an array of complex and comedic tasks.
This series will see comedians Jo Brand, David Baddiel, Ed Gamble, Rose Matafeo and actor Katy Wix battle it out for the title of Taskmaster champion.
Starstruck follows Rose (Matafeo), a twenty-something millennial living in London struggling to juggle two dead-end jobs to make ends meet.
An awkward morning-after-the-night-before is made even worse when she discovers she has accidentally slept with a film star, setting in motion a series of complications she could never have imagined.
Matafeo is a comedian and actress who won the Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards 2018 for her solo show, Horndog.
Announcing the new shows, E4 controller Karl Warner promised that E4 will be the “home of funny, diverse, outrageous, loveable talent.”
In addition to the new and returning shows outlined below, Warner also announced that US favourites Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Young Sheldon, will be returning to E4 for their seventh and third series respectively.
“I was just taken aback that I had the opportunity to get my own [show],” he says of his Friday night chat show.
He made a name for himself last year as the co-host of The Big Narstie Show alongside the grime star. The pair won an RTS Programme Award and a Bafta nod for their entertainment performance.
The Colour of Magic, Sky
Lenny Henry’s Race Through Comedy, will chronicle and celebrate British TV comedy over the years and focus on iconic shows that have highlighted Britain’s mix of multiculturalism.
Henry is a fellow of the RTS and has previously been recognised for his work in helping to raise awareness of issues surrounding diversity within the television industry.
Melvyn Bragg was talking at a special live edition of The South Bank Show, featuring four of the UK’s leading TV writers – Jed Mercurio (writer and creator of hit police corruption thriller Line of Duty); Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith (black comedy anthology Inside No. 9); and Heidi Thomas (period drama Call the Midwife) – discussing their craft.
Written by Gaby Hull (Cheat), the six-part series revolves around Kim Noakes (Williams), a misfit whose father died under suspicious circumstances when she was young.
Following his death Noakes was taken away by her mother to a life of rural seclusion and bizarre survival techniques.
Now all grown up, Noakes enters the real world and embarks on a secret mission to honour her father’s memory.
When Noakes walks into the bar of socially awkward Nicky and his brother Dave, it sets in motion a series of events that puts their lives in danger.
The six-part series will pick up after the end of series eight, where Jenny (Fay Ripley) prepared herself for the rest of her cancer treatment with husband Pete (John Thomson) by her side.
David (Robert Bathurst) was slowly rebuilding his life after becoming homeless, while Adam (James Nesbitt) and Karen (Hermione Norris) were coming to terms with their new romantic relationship and the impact it had on the rest of the group.
Comedy, the late, great Tony Hancock would often tell his dinner guests, was simply “frustration, misery, boredom, worry – all the things people suffer from”.
This may go some way to explaining the success of a crop of deceptively simple, single-camera comedy-dramas that have all but replaced our more traditional idea of the sitcom in the television schedules.
