“We don’t have to take TV seriously”

“I guess maybe a bit of an anti-host,” Hamish Blake reflects.

“They’re long days, so I suppose a lot of that comes from me trying to amuse myself a lot of the time.”

Since hosting Lego Masters in 2019, Blake’s comedic touch has reset the format which began in the UK in 2017. But as he tells TV Tonight, it’s a competition with serious fun.

“I never wanted to run counter to the show. We’ve always been pretty firm in the philosophy that we love the Lego, we love the competition. We take that really seriously.

“But we don’t have to take TV seriously. That just naturally reverberates with how I feel about TV. You can have fun with it, you can muck around with it and it can still also have a real meaning and a point at the same time.”

Before the Australian production, the UK original ran for just 4 episodes on Channel 4 on a Sunday afternoon. Supersized to primetime down under would require the shiny floor approach from producers Endemol Shine. The Aussie series has since won several international awards with Blake’s hosting style mirrored in subsequent productions, including Will Arnett in the USA.

“I just watched all your episodes. I get it.”

“I’ve known Will for 10 years back from radio days. He came on our show and Andy and I stayed in touch with him over the years and caught up when we’re in America. It was a very funny email to get from Will one day going, ‘Hey, they’ve asked me to do this Lego show. I didn’t know anything about it and then I just watched all your episodes. I get it. I can do this,'” he laughs.

“He’s Will Arnett! Leagues above me. But it was certainly a funny turn of events.”

Season 3 sees Blake return with Lego designer Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught and 8 new teams from across the country, competing for the $100,000 prize. The series prides itself on casting pairs who might not normally pass a Central Casting callback.

“If you went to a Lego convention, you might find a quarter of our contestants there”

“If you went to a Lego convention, you might find a quarter of our contestants there. But there’s a lot of people from outside that world who are artists, musicians, engineers – creative people who have a penchant for building in Lego.

“Our Perth boys have dreadlocks and long hair, Sarah and Fleur are our Melbourne mums who are classic Brunswick rad mums with tattoos …musical theatre artists who can build amazing stuff out of Lego. All the teams are wonderful people.”

But with production commencing as Melbourne was nearing the end of Stage 4 lockdown, it was touch and go. Interstate contestants who had quarantined were forced to wait another two weeks.

“We’ve been waiting our whole life to do this. We can wait two weeks.”

“My heart sank because I thought surely we’re going to lose our Perth boys or our Queensland team? They’re not going to hang around for two extra weeks. But no one batted an eyelid. All the contestants said, ‘We’ve been waiting our whole life to do this. We can wait two weeks.’

“But I’m glad we waited. There was one version where we could have started during hard lockdown but there would have been a lot of regulations like gloves in the brick pit. The call was made that it would just suck the fun out of it.

“Everyone’s still sanitising stuff before they use the Lego. So there’s been a few logistical things but I reckon that’s the industry all over, for any set that was able to keep going…if that’s what we got to do to keep working it’s a very tiny nuisance compared to not working.”

This year there are a whopping 3.2 million bricks for teams to rip apart in making the builds. There is a brick, plate, tile and Minifigure for every challenge. The season has also upped the episode count from 2019 (9), 2020 (12) to 2021 (14).

“We’ve also always been really cautious of doing that too. I like the fact that Lego kind of pops up for a few weeks, and then it’s gone. I think that’s part of its charm,” Blake suggests.

“The number one thing that kids always say to me is ‘It’s over too quickly'”

“The number one thing that kids always say to me is ‘It’s over too quickly.’ I don’t go into explaining to kids the science of television programming and how they probably wouldn’t like it if it hung around too long! But you’re always trying to balance that that feeling.”

Indeed Blake has even grown to love the studio advantages in making the show, resisting suggestions to set challenges on location. An underwater challenge from Season 2 was initially going to take place at Melbourne Aquarium.

“We couldn’t logistically but I’m so glad we didn’t,” he explains.

“Part of what we’re trying to capture -as corny as it sounds- is the magic and the wonder of Lego. A little bit of that comes from being able to shoot it in the studio with the lights and cameras.

“Initially we were going to shoot that on a rooftop in Melbourne”

“Last season we had a build, which was simply ‘Build as tall as you can.’ Initially we were going to shoot that on a rooftop in Melbourne, so you’d have the city in the background. But it was during bushfires, with high winds and stuff like that. So there were a lot of good reasons we didn’t.”

Blake’s enthusiasm for the show is evident both in media interviews and, more importantly, on screen. If Lego Masters brings out the man-child in him, it also brings big audiences to Nine as their lead show for Q2.

“I still have fun, I don’t ever get bored on the show”

At its heart is imagination and creativity under pressure, under the gaze of TV cameras.

“Unless it’s interesting to watch people’s process of thinking of things to build… none of this works. After the first day (of Season One), no one left. We were all hanging around looking at what people built, amazed by what we’d seen. I think that’s when everyone looked at each other and went, ‘Great!'” he recalls.

“I still have fun, I don’t ever get bored on the show. I still like watching people grapple with a creative idea under pressure and to see what they can come up with.”

Lego Masters returns 7:30pm Monday on Nine.