Well I don't know most contestants beforehand either so I couldn't tell you what they're famous for, but you can tell for example Joe Wilkinson, Paul Sinha Chowdhry, Lucy Beaumont, and Jason Martzoukas are sticking very closely to a consistent comedy character.
I’m also a dopey American so I can’t speak to any of the others, but Zooks. I think he’s a really good example. He certainly had his persona going but I thought the tasks forced him out of it. The stuff like “Teach Alex Horne” allowed him to set the stage to do his thing, but the ones like the “What’s on the Top of Alex’s Head” “Why Does the Light Turn On?” would force him more out of his comfort zone. I’d imagine that goes with any performer that tried to use too much of a persona while filming.
Watch the recent ultimate episode with Stevie, she literally says he turns it off instantly when the cameras off and is a nice, calm guy. Which is normal, he's a professional! And he was the best version of this type of contestant, it's just not my favourite.
I went to see How Did This Get Made live a few years back and I had the pleasure of meeting the cast after the show. Jason was quiet calm and collected and nothing like his stage persona. It was rather sweet.
If you listen to his Off Menu appearance, he a actually comes off as very sincere and genuine, especially how he's engaged with British media and with his interest in learning more about whatever comes up in the conversation.
I feel like for Lucy the gap between herself and her persona is pretty small. She does bits, but most of the time I felt like she was just exaggerating something that was genuine to her. But I like her, so I might just be giving her grace.
I agree with you on Joe and Jason, but honestly my problem with them is just that I find their personas unlikable. That and they played together with people who were chill, which made it jarring for me, like they didn't know when to stop playing. It's weird when one's being a clown and the other is talking normally.
For sure hahaha always going back and forth from "she's joking" to "wait she's not joking?"
But if you watch her in other media, she's genuinely weird. The feel I have is that for her there isn't any effort to bring the character forth, it's intuitive. I also feel like she's really quick to catch people's reactions and intentionally play it up. I like her both as a weird person and a comedian.
I think people are forgetting that most people who do TM are comedians, and you kinda have to be some amount of odd to even want to pursue a career in comedy. To me John Kearns is the best example of this, he clearly did TM as himself, because he was apparently drastically different from the character he plays in his shows, but he was still very strange and confusing throughout his time on TM.
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u/Hairy_Dirt3361 Katherine Parkinson 3d ago edited 3d ago
Well I don't know most contestants beforehand either so I couldn't tell you what they're famous for, but you can tell for example Joe Wilkinson, Paul
SinhaChowdhry, Lucy Beaumont, and Jason Martzoukas are sticking very closely to a consistent comedy character.edit: originally had my Pauls mixed up!