Tara Ward is just a mum, standing in front of a TV show, asking it to stop grinding.
The Nek Minnit man is on top of a big, pink skateboard ramp, plonked somewhere in a suburban Auckland carpark. “Wassup,” he greets the group of mums and their children gathered below, who cheer at this unexpected celebrity appearance. Nek minnit, he leaps onto his skateboard, glides down the short ramp and flies into a giant foam pit. It’s Levi Hawken, broadcaster Tegan Yorwarth tells us, and he’s skated into the first episode of Ready Gamer Mum to judge which mother has created the most stylish giant skateboard.
TVNZ’s new competition series Ready Gamer Mum is an original format developed by South Pacific Pictures from an idea by Tom Hutchison, which sees 10 expert gamers and their “not so tech-savvy” mothers play video games to win $50,000. The catch? The mums are the only ones allowed to touch the controller. “We take ten gamers’ mums out of the home and into the hot seat,” the show’s trailer promises. Hosted by Yorwarth, episode one challenges the teams to play Tony Hawk Skater Pro, which is why these mothers are standing in that car park, ready to prove their skating prowess in the real world.
Moments earlier, the 10 teams had entered the Ready Gamer Mum arena for the first time. The show began with an upbeat Lego Masters NZ-type vibe, with lots of energy and enthusiasm from the players and plenty of good-natured ribbing between the generations. These mums have come on the show to spend time with their adult children, with 73-year-old Sandra the oldest mother to compete, having first picked up a game controller just two weeks earlier.
Ready Gamer Mum wants to flip the family dynamic by showing how kids can teach their parent new tricks. Nine of the 10 expert gamers are men, and while we don’t learn much about their mothers in the first two episodes, the show’s official bios hint at accomplished lives lived far beyond the gaming chair. Sandra is a retired interpreter originally from Burma. Rebekah, 56, raised six children, while dairy farmer Rachel homeschooled her son Romy and his four siblings. Lisa, 52, spends zero time gaming. “I’m the mum who unplugged the internet. I thought it would be better for them to be outside,” she says.
The mums get a few hours to practice the new game, in the hope they’ll become “mildly competent”, as Yorwarth puts it. While these maternal legends should probably be relaxing in the nearest five-star hotel ordering room service and counting all the sleepless nights their kids have given them over the years, they’ll do anything to avoid disappointing their offspring by getting a low score and being eliminated. That includes throwing themselves down a pink skate ramp in front of old mate Nek Minnit. “One last hug before she slides to what I can only imagine is her untimely demise,” pipes up Tony Lyall, who along with fellow comedian Brynley Stent, provides some hilarious whip-smart commentary of the side quest challenges.
Ready Gamer Mum has all the hallmarks of wholesome family entertainment, apart from one important thing. There’s an underlying joke here about older mothers that the show won’t admit to making. This show isn’t called Ready Gamer Dad, or Ready Gamer Boomer, or Ready Gamer Someone Who’s Never Gamed Before. It’s Ready Gamer Mum, and its success relies on tired stereotypes about how uncool and incompetent mothers are. They can’t work technology, they look funny sliding down a ramp, look how much they love crafts. Into the foam pit you go, ladies!
Mostly, it’s hard to know what Ready Gamer Mum is saying. It’s no surprise that women who have dedicated the past few decades of their lives to raising families, building careers and performing endless unpaid domestic work aren’t immediately good at gaming, given they’ve had neither the time or freedom to sit in a chair for hours, grinding and ollie-ing or whatever the fork it is you do on Tony Hawk Skater Pro. Taking these mums “out of the home” to play video games is a bold claim in 2026, and the fact that in episode one, the show chooses to dress them in costumes that will give them “main character energy” shows how wonky this concept is. These wonderful mothers already have main character energy. Ready Gamer Mum just doesn’t want to see it.
It’s rare to have so many women of an older generation on one TV show, so kudos to Ready Gamer Mum for that – it’s just a shame they’ve diminished these interesting, intelligent women to what they can’t do, then made them compete against each other. Perhaps as the season unfolds, these women will take on their children and show them how it’s really done, or perhaps Ready Gamer Mum will find some mature women who are already expert gamers and celebrate their skills too. Or maybe, instead of telling their mothers what to do, the sons could try out some new things that mums are really good at, like enduring the gender pay gap, navigating the health challenges of perimenopause, or being shamed for having the audacity to age naturally.
Either way, this uncool old mother is ready to come out of the home and tip her backwards skater cap at Ready Gamer Mum in thanks. Aren’t I lucky to live in a world where men know how to make machine go beep?
Ready Gamer Mum screens on Thursdays on TVNZ2 at 7.30pm and streams on TVNZ+.
Discussion about this post