Hamish Blake has made a very good career out of looking like the friend who volunteered before hearing the whole plan. Stan’s new eight-part series Unskilled Adult turns that energy into an actual business: Blake and two equally underqualified famous recruits will attempt real jobs for real Australians, then stand there while the client decides whether the work deserves any money.
The show premieres with two episodes on 1 November, followed by weekly instalments. Challenges include welding a trailer, catering a wedding, drywalling a salami shed and sewing costumes for a community theatre. That last one may be the most dangerous, because nobody wants to disappoint theatre people holding large scissors.
Hamish Blake finally has a job he cannot bluff
The clever part of Unskilled Adult is the payment. This is not simply celebrities flailing at practical work before a producer declares everybody a winner. Blake starts a business, takes on people’s genuine jobs and puts the value of the result in the client’s hands. If the freshly welded trailer looks as though it should never be introduced to a highway, the invoice can reflect that.
Stan’s official announcement says each episode pairs Blake with two underqualified personalities. The humour will come from the scramble, but the format also gives the work some weight. A wedding still needs food. A community theatre still needs costumes. A salami shed, wonderfully, still needs walls.
Blake describes his 44 years without many practical skills as perfect preparation for the series. It is a self-deprecating line, of course, but it also identifies why he suits the job. His comedy works best when confidence and capability are separated by a suspicious amount of daylight. He commits to the bit, realises the bit has consequences, then keeps moving because reversing would be more embarrassing.
Unskilled Adult has more heart than a failure montage
There is another show hiding under the obvious chaos. Plenty of adults quietly believe they missed the age when they were supposed to learn practical skills. They can operate six subscription services and navigate a group chat involving 14 parents, yet a drill bit or sewing machine can make them feel eight years old. Unskilled Adult turns that embarrassment into permission to be a beginner in public.
The series is produced by UA Productions, with executive producers including Blake, Tim Bartley, Greg Sitch and Plum Stubbings. Their credits stretch across Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year, True Story with Hamish and Andy, Fisk and Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee. That mixture suggests a format interested in people as much as punchlines.
Blake’s long catalogue on Stan’s official cast page already includes travel adventures, caravan disasters and ordinary Australians telling extraordinary stories. The new series folds those strengths into a format with clearer stakes. Viewers get the familiar pleasure of watching him improvise, while the people who actually need a job completed get final say.
Stan is building a very Australian kind of slate
Unskilled Adult also fits neatly into Stan’s current local push. The streamer has companion shows extending The Block and Love Island Australia, glossy dramas such as Rachel Griffiths’ Slander, and an Australian beach reworking of Jane Austen in Stuck Up & Stupid.
Against that scale, Blake’s little work truck and questionable labour force feel reassuringly ordinary. The jobs are specific, the clients are real and the joke does not require anybody to be cruel. Even the show’s publicity assets arrive through Stan’s official Nine Upfront collection, positioning it as a central part of the platform’s coming slate rather than a throwaway experiment.
The best outcome is not that Blake suddenly becomes a master welder, tailor and caterer. It is that the rest of us watch him make a proper mess, learn something anyway and feel slightly less ridiculous about the half-finished shelf in the garage. If the shelf remains crooked, at least we now have a possible television career.
About the author
The conversation
Be the first to join the conversation.