a thread for Taskmaster

series 18 starts today so it seems like it's time for a thread for my favorite tv show that is very difficult to explain in an appealing way to other americans

if you haven't heard of it though, here's the gist: each season/series has five comedians/comic actors competing against each other across 10 episodes. to get points, they have to do a variety of useless, trivial contests. these contests are judged by the titular taskmaster (greg davies) who mocks their stupid choices and assigns points completely subjectively. he also mocks alex horne, his lackey, who actually runs the contests (and who is the creator of the show). you can watch all of it on youtube.

reasons i love it: it's 100% about the laughs. it is silly but there is a strong streak of acidic humor through the whole thing. as an american, i rarely have any preconceived notions about the contestants as celebrities, so it's fun to form opinions about them and see how they behave - you do get attached to certain contestants.

there are some weaker series here and there (including the most recent series 17 and the earlier series 6) but most of them are good. i think a classic recommendation for a starting point is series 7, though series 4 has two great british bake-off hosts (mel and noel) and i also loved series 16.

List of my favourite seasons, based on a quick scan of the wikipedia page:

5: Aisling Bea, Bob Mortimer, Mark Watson, Nish Kumar & Sally Phillips
2: Doc Brown, Joe Wilkinson, Jon Richardson, Katherine Ryan & Richard Osman
7: James Acaster, Jessica Knappett, Kerry Godliman, Phil Wang & Rhod Gilbert
11: Charlotte Ritchie, Jamali Maddix, Lee Mack, Mike Wozniak & Sarah Kendall

Taskmaster NZ:
2: David Correos, Guy Montgomery, Laura Daniel, Matt Heath & Urzila Carlson

those are good recommendations. joe wilkinson is definitely one of my favorite contestants

i tried to watch one of the spinoff taskmasters and it was too weird to see other people running the show. i'm kind of curious to try and see the cursed american version that brought alex horne over, it must be awful

I cannot in good conscience recommend Taskmaster Portugal - the episodes are fucking 90 minutes long and they're way too chummy - but if anyone does fancy it, there's an online community that has written subtitles for most episodes, and one season has W*ndson L*sboa, a Brazilian influencer who has done a lot of great work standing up to the racists and is also a personal friend.

Went to see Mike Wozniak at the Greenwich comedy festival on Thursday (headliner Harry Hill) purely off the back of my girlfriend's Taskmaster crush on him, and he was incredibly good.

His secret farting task may remain the single funniest moment of the whole series. Ok, maybe I had a crush on him too.

Just watched first ep of the new season - seems to have potential! Jack Dee the ne plus ultra of the "checked out fiftysomething" competitor archetype.

I recently watched the first season (fine, series) and enjoyed it quite a bit. Then started series 5 bc people on the internet seem to think that's one of the best ones, but found myself missing the contestants from series 1. But maybe I'll warm up to them.

That's your classic Taskmaster arc right there

it does, i think, suffer a bit from having the good contestants on whilst it was finding its feet.

I only started watching this a couple of years ago and only recently entered the Covid years (have watched the newer series in tandem tho). Tbh by season 9 I was a bit bored of it but that may have come from watching so much in a relatively short space of time (my partner is still as enthusiastic about it as ever tho). If we'd actually binged it during the Covid years that would've been a real mood-lifter.

As a two series per year show that started nine years ago you can see over time how they've recognised the need for a more diverse set of contestants. It's a bit of a shame they went with five contestants and not six in that respect.

The series that Ed Gamble won was one of the hardest to watch as he got so repeatedly wound up and you could see at times how uncomfortable it made Jo Brand and Rose Matafeo in particular.

The series that Liza Tarbuck won (6) is a fave tho. The seventh is where I started to have no real knowledge of two or three of the contestants (obviously due to ignoring almost all UK comedy of the last ten years). Of the latest series Jack Dee is the only one I know. There are still some older Mock The Week type comedians you'd think might have shown up on it by now but haven't.

took me a few tries to get into this show, series 7 was the one that finally clicked, where I realised it was as much about the in-studio joking(*) as the tasks. I've gone back and seen all or most of the other series now.

(*) 'banter' is verboten.

The biggest laughs are often the studio post-mortems, agreed.

I found the series with Lou Sanders/Iain Stirling/Sian Gibson/Paul Sinha hard to watch. Suspect they'd each all have been fine on another series with different people around them, but there wasn't a real Taskmastery feel to the whole thing.

Sorry for excluding Joe Thomas from the last list before hitting send. He was also awkward and I liked his awkwardness but in an awkward series it didn't stand out much

it does, i think, suffer a bit from having the good contestants on whilst it was finding its feet.

This is one of the reasons the Champion of Champions is a good idea, and I'm hoping they'll do a few Champion of Champion of Champions specials as well.

I found the series with Lou Sanders/Iain Stirling/Sian Gibson/Paul Sinha hard to watch.

Because she's so awful and Paul Sinha was so obviously ill, right? I actually really enjoyed Joe Thomas's awkward shtick. It made a nice low-key contrast to shouty people like eg Ed Gamble (even though I also enjoyed Ed Gamble on this show).

Yeah, I liked Joe and also think Ian's shouty hypercompetitiveness would have been fun against better competition, but everything just felt stilted and awkward. Paul clearly wasn't up to it and yeah, Lou's just awful.

my wife really hated Paul Sinha in that season, for reasons I still don't entirely understand; I liked the whole thing well enough, not as great as 7 ofc but miles ahead of 6.

I'm in the middle of rewatching s8, it feels like a midlevel series to me. it's mostly defined by Iain and Lou being very competitive and having uncomfortable group tasks where they're both trying to run things and end up arguing. Paul is low-energy but fine. I like Sian and Joe, they are cute and fun.
the task in s8e1 where Alex is on one railroad bridge and the contestants are on the other and they have to try and sneak up on him is the task that I would most like to do IRL. I'm not saying I'd be good at it but it looked really fun. like acting out metal gear solid.

His secret farting task may remain the single funniest moment of the whole series.

seconded.

in my rewatch i just finished s9, and while i don't think it's necessarily the best season, it might be the one i recommend people start with. it has the classic range of contestants: the high-strung try-hard (ed gamble), the one tries to play it cool but is also actually a try-hard (rose matafeo), the one who's in the middle of making an effort and having fun (katy wix), the one who doesn't give a shit but pulls off some occasional coups (jo brand), and the total incompetent (david baddiel). plus there are some really great tasks through the season.

not sure how i feel about the newest season yet. rosie jones has won me over with her prize tasks - the coffin was very funny. jones and dee is a very good team for the team tasks because she keeps making him break from his grumpy old man character. andy zaltzman is a little annoying but he's had some good quips. baba and emma sidi seem fine but unremarkable so far. the pub quiz task was one of the better group tasks they've had in a while.

Baba's not the funniest guy or the best task doer, but he's very likeable. Emma's kind of nothingy.

Emma's decision that if she kisses the other contestants on their hands that counts as cheating was great.

Maybe it was just because I needed a release of tension after watching Threads earlier in the week, but I laughed like an absolute idiot at Taskmaster last night. Except for Rosie's children's TV puppet, which just made me ill.

The joke at the top of their news segment and then Greg Davies' tying it together with an allusion to a certain blond-haired media personality was pretty funny though.

The tasks themselves have been especially good the last few eps

taskmaster kids starts next Friday

binge watching this from the very beginning. it's exactly the kind of show i could see my parents recommending to me, which would've led me to never watch it.

the current cast has grown on me. rosie jones and jack dee are my favorites.

Rosie Jones is great, she's everywhere around here these days.

Andy Zaltman calling Daniel Kitson on the phone is def the closest that guy will ever come to Taskmaster. Reminds me of an ancient nabisco post about seeing some news report with a punk holding up Pink Flag to the camera and how 99% of viewers would have no reference to notice that but 1% would be going apeshit.

the email address on alex's suit-back advertising board appeared to hint at the initials for the next lot of contestants

FEG . JM . MB . RR . SM @ alexhornemedia . com

Hell of a comeback for Barrymore. Also nice to see Rowland Rivron in work.

If Junior Taskmaster is half as good as Junior Bakeoff, it will truly be the balm we all need.

Because nobody gets voted off!

xxposts yep, that checks out with a list I've seen. One of those people, urgh, no thanks.

junior taskmaster ep 1 was very cute. they did a good job of finding kids with personality who weren't too cute. i'm ambivalent about rose as taskmaster but mike wozniak makes a great alex.

do people really call their kids laser?

was assuming that was a name chosen by the kid

I like all the contestants now. Andy's smugness has become endearing, the initially boring Emma is actually a really good egg and a great sport, and Babatunde might be the most affable man alive.

Rhod Gilbert’s repeated use of that Greg Davies photo, task be damned, is pure gold.

Watching series 14 and seeing them in a closed, deserted Gatwick is quite jarring now (filmed in 2021?)

Yeah that was eerie. Enjoyed it though.

i think his name is Lan x...

season 8 has been a rough watch. it's the first season where the overall energy of the contestants is missing the mark.

Paul Sinha is clearly very ill in that season.

Ok, after hearing Andy Zaltzman on Off Menu I start watching season 18, and it's excellent.

New Years Treat mainly served to reinforce my crush Hannah Fry.

*on

I do remember seeing a clip from the Swedish one where they recycled the "don't blink" one, and some human freak didn't blink for hours (including leaving for the day and driving home).

The first season of Danish Taskmaster (Stormester) recycled quite a few British ones, and one of the contestants had clearly seen the original, so he put water on the teabags/got the mat down from the hill, etc. It wasn't fun at all.

The only great Stormester-moment that I know of is when they did one of those 'do something for this person' tasks, and it was an old couple who had a sixty year wedding anniversary, and Tobias Rahim the popsinger was on that season, and he wrote a beautiful ballad based on how the man had been in the army during the Cold War and had been away from his wife a lot and they both had been really afraid. And the Taskmaster started crying. I'm not sure that has happened anywhere else.

Another inspired by/flip from the most recent one I watched -

UK: create the live foley soundtrack to a short film of Alex doing stuff

NZ: create a short film, then (a later task after it's been edited together) overdub all the sound

I do remember seeing a clip from the Swedish one where they recycled the "don't blink" one, and some human freak didn't blink for hours (including leaving for the day and driving home).

Thay was the Norwegian version, and the freak was Bård Ylvisåker, half of viral novelty pop success Ylvis

NZ5 was really good with hindsight, I wasn't so bothered about NZ6 - one of the contestants is very good at seeing the coded solution although they fail in interpretation at least once.

But agree on the quality of musical turns in both NZ and Australia. Sherlock Holmes The Musical in NZ6 is great but my two favourites are the David Correos diss track in NZ2 and the Danielle Walker self-aggrandising personal theme tune in Aus1.

that david correos diss track was incredible.

My friend Rob made that sign from The Dark And Lonely Water, he sells lovely replica signs and clocks from 60s/70s/80s TV/Film etc

https://hiddenbritain.bigcartel.com/

Ok the Chesham mascot task wasn't the best, but it did lead me to this slice of Sam Campbell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv4zW1sV9Bs

took me a while to work out the mascot was a mixup of chess and ham (which is poor)

usually a 'new' comedian gets a boost from being on taskmaster but i'm not feeling it for these two.

Difficult to imagine what a boost for Maisie Adam would even look like tbh, she's already been omnipresent pre-Taskmaster.

she's not one of the two though! i was only talking about ania and phil

I think Ania's been great, and I feel like there must be some mayhem from Phil to come.

(I also loved the 'everyone must call the person in the lab by their name' task, and how the cycle worked differently for the team of 3 vs 2)

Maisie Adam's uncle was Deputy Director General of the BBC, she does fine without any other kind of boost thank you very much.

4xtra repeats are currently Alan, desree, guz, morgana, Victoria... a good group.

a fun task i'd forgotten - ring a friend and keep them on the phone as long as possible whilst doing tasks like yawning for 10s, playing the harmonica and avoiding keywords.

current repeats are series 13, ardal, brigitte, Chris ramsey, judy, sophie. yesterday was brigitte's historical film of the death of laika done with traffic cones.

later we'll have the one with all the drool.

(i did watch this all 6 months ago but that's not bothering me)

We're still about three weeks behind, but absolutely loving Sanjeev.

i think this is where i've landed on the current series:
i do not like maisie. for some reason i thought she was going to be the wacky oddball but instead she never understands the tasks, gets angry that she misunderstood the task, and isn't very funny doing either of those things. she might be a great standup but i find her quite annoying here.
the rest of the cast i find generally likeable. ania and sanjeev are my favorites but phil and reese are good too. but none of them seem that interested in either winning the tasks or taking interesting creative approaches to the tasks. reese is the most creative but relies a lot on green screen or other production cheats. generally they're all kind of route one, which is frustrating because there have been some potentially great tasks this season. i would like to see more competence or more weirdness.

I find Reese and Maisie quite dull in different ways. Maisie is just not good at Taskmaster. Reese is only good at the things you'd expect him to be good at, and his creativity isn't even that special, which is weird for a guy whose entire thing is his creativity. I wonder if I'd view him differently had he been on before Steve Pemberton?

Sanjeev, Ania and Phil are all great though in entirely different ways.

I find Reese's hammed up rage quite amusing.

It's got a little bit of that series 6 thing where there were great tasks that didn't result in anything particularly memorable. Maisie and Reece are all-time panickers for any sort of problem-solving task. But I'm still enjoying this one much more.

Been re-watching series 11 with my wife and enjoying that way more than I did the first time around. Not that I didn't enjoy it, but I remembered it as more of a slow burn until the last group of eps, and it's actually pretty great from the jump.

I may have ruptured some internal organs laughing at the discussion of corkscrew penises.

Ania, Phil and Sanjeev give such good Taskmaster. Sanjeev in particular is absolute gold. A whole new cerebral approach to giving zero fucks, rather than just petulantly giving zero fucks.

Phil saying "no the other end, with the arms" is the highlight of the show for many series now.

The ducks task highlights Sanjeev perfectly.

Greg is absolutely right about Phil. He's the closest thing to Tommy Cooper available to the younger generation.

I was disappointed with the winner of this series. I did not think it was deserved.

Ha, I couldn't believe it, but it is a hilarious result for this series. Listed to the podcast on the way to work today, which was good stuff. Great episode though.

finished episode 7 - just trying to force myself to finish this series at this point. the heist task had all the potential of being great and ended up being a complete turd with this set of contestants.

Yes, out of the possible outcomes of the end of this series, that was very much not what I expected, or wanted.

it was mildly annoying. I don't really care who wins the season except that it means that she'll be back for champion of champions instead of someone more amusing.

she didn't even seem to know what was going on about 50% of the time

christmas celeb version had a couple of people who will, no doubt, make me think less of them (martin lewis, i am looking at you).

the 4extra repeats have stopped after dara's season

The worst part about being in the UK last week was not being able to watch Taskmaster on youtube.

Maisie was not my favorite, but I enjoyed that final.

i saw Paul F. Tompkins had a guest appearance on the podcast - praying that's a sign he's on the upcoming season.

ok - wow that was a genuinely shit end to the series

Paul F Tompkins has been on the Taskmaster podcast before. This time around I'd wager he was on because he was in London to appear in a couple of Thrilling Adventure Hour shows and Richard Herring's podcast. As you might guess from these close tabs I'm keeping I'm also a fan and would love for him to be on, but I worry that absent a live action sitcom regular spot or some film roles* he'll be viewed as TM podcast material, not TM proper material.

* besides There Will Be Blood

I don't think it's about fame, although he's plenty well-known and assume he'll do it at some point just because he really wants it. I don't think it will be the next series or two though.

Well, re: that plenty well known, partially this is me thinking about Tompkins on Threedom describing the Richard Herring interview as a pretty awkward experience because he felt few people in the room even had any idea who he was. Taskmaster is a very mainstream show here in the UK and if you're not into US alt comedy, I think you're less likely to know PFT than Mantzoukas (whom ppl might recognise from The Good Place or The League) or next season contestant Kumail Nanjiani (who's had film roles). The most high profile stuff PFT has in that context is voiceover work.

I'm very into UK comedy and had never heard of Ania until this season (and Phil is fairly unknown to a lot of people - the mainstream UK TV comedy pool is smaller than the net cast by Taskmaster) If a cast member works well, I don't think their history really matters that much

I am distinguishing between UK and US contestants here.

Yeah, but I'm saying that it doesn't really matter where they're from, we've had relatively unknown Australians and relatively unknown UK comedians and it tends not to matter very much. Perhaps I'm not grasping something, if so, I apologise.

Well, the idea is that Channel 4 and the show have an interest in pushing for local talent (including aussies and yanks who live here), good for the industry and helps with the four quadrant-ing to have an up and coming gen z person in there. That is not so much the case with US talent, I'd have thought. Perhaps I am being overly cynical though and tbc nothing would make me happier than to be wrong, PFT would be amazing on the show.

I’m US and don’t know 95% of the contestants unless they were on some Mighty Boosh/Garth Marenghi related thing.

As long as they seem like a good fit for the show that’s all I care about.

From the UK and I'd rather see Mr Peanutbutter than someone I only know from a small handful of episodes of Community, Parks & Rec and The Good Place (irrespective of how great he turned out).

Tried to get tix for the Chicago live show, 2 min after the presale email went out, but they were all gone. Bots, probably? This is why I don't go to big concerts (one of the reasons, anyway).

whoa this is the first I'm hearing of this

Regular tickets go on sale tomorrow, yeah?

Yeah, I'll try again.

hadn't heard about this either! will definitely try to get tix tomorrow

failed to get tickets, oh well

I don't think anybody got tickets!