Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29186

^ the pembleton crossword

Watched the episode last night. Picking away at the crossword, I've got about half done.

aside from a kind of boring cast, this season also seems to have more team tasks and more tasks that are about creativity (like make a portrait of this person using the contents of the hamper), which are usually less fun imo

they were more fun, dare i say it, when it was lucy and sam doing it...

(or bob or sally...)

i just prefer when the contestants are stressed out and tortured, not making fun drawings or videos or whatever

i agree this series is lacking something, there's no great spark between any of the contestants in the studio. anyway i finished the xword, had to reveal three or four but all solid clues imo, great job.

steve and nick are the first people i've seen posting about their experiences on twitterx, which is nice. but maybe that's just an algorithm thing.

I like the creative tasks. I agree that this series has generally been less laugh-out-loud funny than some, but I've still found it enjoyable in a more low key, gently amusing way. Maybe it's because there are fewer stand up comics than usual? (or at least fewer comedians who do wisecracking, riffing stuff rather than more character stuff?)

I find all the contestants likeable enough now (Nick is just hardcore adorable), but yeah not the funniest bunch.

Some of Greg's recent postmortems have been suffocatingly hilarious, on the other hand.

the channel 4 streaming service had some episodes of the Swedish version of Taskmaster available a while ago, and the Swedish one felt a bit like this, mostly not uproariously funny but the participants were all likeable and it was fun to watch, sometimes you don't want to see people straining to be funny or wring every last drop of comic possibility out of every riff.

I absolutely can't go Joanne McNally but the rest of them are very amiable and amusing without being annoying, and I also wish they had better tasks.

Agree on both counts.

Aw she's a bit grating but basically quite sweet.

ATTENTION, PUNKS:

lady parts actually good. and quite a scoop with the cameo.

was distracted by work through the taskmaster final and the announcement of next series contestants. andy, babatundi, emma, jack, rosy. couple of names i can't quite place.

Emma plays Rose Matafeo's flatmate in Starstruck. Babatunde seems mostly stand-up though he did do I'm a Celebrity recently and thus does things like Celebrity Gogglebox etc now as well. I assume you're familiar with the other three.

banatunde's name is familiar certainly. QI? Hignfy? but i tend to avoid things with Celebrity in the title which don't involve them making things.

i have watched all 3 series of Starstruck but still can't visualise a flatmate. i hope she's even half as good as RM, one of my favourite taskers.

speaking of which, what happened to junior TM she was going to present?

According to this official-looking page, the tasks were filmed in late 2023, but the page hasn't been updated in months. Does seem a bit odd.

(I didn't mean official-looking, but believable-looking, really.)

House of Games? xxpost to koogs