What do you do when the talent show format just isn’t bringing in the views it used to? Well, according to ITV, you stick a terrifying mask on your contestants! Bizarrely, it’s kind of working. 

Over the last few years, there have been a few talents shows to say the least. Starting with Pop Idol in the early 2000s, which was then usurped by the popularity of the X Factor, to Britain’s Got Talent, and The Voice UK to name a few. However, these shows have all become stale relatively quickly, and with BBC’s hit Strictly Come Dancing continuing to rake in the views every year, it feels as if ITV have been struggling to keep up as they experiment with new talent shows every year.

However, The Masked Singer is decidedly… different. 

The premise is simple: a “celebrity” puts on a silly costume, sings a song, and the judges try to guess who it is. It sounds relatively simple in theory, but in execution, the show reveals itself to be an explosion of absolute lunacy and brilliance. That’s not to say that this is ground-breaking television, the concept itself is borrowed from South Korea. Still, The Masked Singer a breath of fresh air in the British talent show landscape which can often feel monotonous and dull.

So far, the show feels like a mixed bag. The Masked Singer in the show comes from sitting in your living room with a glass of wine yelling out increasingly ludicrous guesses as to who each celeb could be using the clues provided in the VT. This meta element makes the act of watching feel like a social event, as you listen to everyone else’s theories, like a very casual and light-hearted crime scene. 

However, once the singing starts, everyone becomes glassy-eyed and starts talking about something else or looking at their phones to Twitter to scroll through posts tagged #themaskedsingerUK. That’s not to say that all of the singing is bad, in fact, some of the contestants are very talented. It’s the judges that make this segment unbearable. The way that the show is edited means that the judges are shouting their guesses over the singing, making it difficult for viewers to properly watch the singing. Don’t even get me started on their guesses – from guessing A-Listers who definitely have better things to be doing to dead people, it’s clear they are told to guess as wildly as possible in order to keep the mystery of the show. That doesn’t make it any less unbearable for me to witness Rita Ora name dropping her celebrity “friends” as guesses like Tahani from The Good Place, or Ken Jeong shouting out increasingly improbable names for comedic effect.

I’m not going to lie and tell you that this show is a must-watch, but if on a Saturday evening you find yourself sat in front of the TV, I can guarantee that with a drink and good company, your time will not be wasted as you watch the madness of The Masked Singer unfold.

Rating = 3/5