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 knew the word but wasn't surprised that most of the contestants didn't know it, since I think of it as fairly obscure. Would've said the same as Nina if asked how I know it (not sure, just something I picked up at some point).

And wasn't aware that there was any age or transatlantic divide.

I'm a 40-something American and I'd never heard of it!

I was with Chloe that it was a Glee fan, only context it'd ever heard it in. I'd never heard it in that context (50-something, Scotland)

Yeah, same here (56, Ireland). Anyway, I couldn't watch that task once they started doing it. No thank you.

Absolute nonsense scoring on that one as well, you can't ask someone to do something accidentally - if you insist on that criteria it should've been five pts to Ayoade and zero for everyone else.

I knew the word and, as it turns out, can still do it (mostly) on command

Gross!

I also knew the word but can only do it when there’s something delicious in front of me and I feel inclined to yawn

i had to go back and rewatch the episode because i'd apparently shut my brain off from remembering that horrifying task.

The hilarious thing is that I guessed what the word was before watching the episode just from the conversation here, even before Glee was mentioned

Yeah, for those who are familiar with the term I suppose I gave it away with my partial definition.

Chloe is really carrying this season imo. Pretty bored by the others although I do like Nina's avant garde streak. Richard and Matt are hard for me to watch and Isy is just sort of there.

Gleeking was a big think among my peers as yout but I never dabbled in it

I know it's early days but I mostly feel a lack of camraderie, no real dynamics between the five of them.

Yeah Chloe has been the most entertaining by far, I like how she absolutely throws herself into the tasks 110%.

As an American who is usually completely unfamiliar with most or all of the cast, I was stunned to learn this week that Nina is a ventriloquist. I figured Greg was making a dry joke when he first mentioned it but then quickly intuited that no, she actually is a famous & successful ventriloquist. America's big ventriloquist Jeff Dunham is deeply conservative and openly racist, and lives in that mystery zone of celebrity where he seems to be simultaneously hugely successful and universally reviled. Made me realize that based solely on him, I've been conditioned to think of all ventriloquists as awful people. My first reaction with Nina was "she's a ventriloquist?? but she seems so funny and nice!"

I will admit that Richard’s “can I keep this” schtick gets me every single time

Me too. They're all very low-key, but I'm kind of enjoying it in a different way. But maybe my standards are low.

Chloe goes by they/them, just ftr.

I like how she absolutely throws herself into the tasks 110%.

Agree completely. I think the other four are held back a bit by not wanting to look ridiculous, whereas Chloe does not give one shit about that and therefore looks much cooler.

Chloe totally fucking rules and I'm always impressed with their task-solving

Matt bringing in his mom as a prize was also hilarious

xp ah good to know, ty trishyb

I just finished COC1 and two of the tasks (edible masks, make a mess then clean it up) we're the most personally appalling things I can imagine seeing.

Katherine Ryan's solution to the latter an all time classic tho.

Oh I definitely admired her for that even if I was initially horrified too!

I'm onto series 8 episode 2 now and it has the makings of my favorite already. Lou has been great and Sian reminds me of a Welsh Connie Britton.

> Lou has been great

that's not going to get you far around here 8)

the daily freeview repeats have looped around to series 6, acaster, knappett, godliman, wang, gilbert which has got to be up there with the best of them (i say this a lot)

(series 7)

One side-effect of getting into Taskmaster that I didn’t expect but should have seen coming is that every other program available on BritBox has people I recognize in it

I'm pro-Lou fwiw. The wife really hated Paul Sinha from that season for some reason.

I think series 7 has the funniest studio scenes. Quite a few of them are pretty rubbish and/or boring at the tasks, though.

I kind of had trouble enjoying series 7 even though I've seen (and liked!) James Acaster in a couple of things. I've been dealing with a lot of depression lately and when I was watching that series it was especially bad; Rhod was also a sticking point for me, pantsing Alex in ep 1 and his general balls-to-the-wall approach turned me off (though even I had to admire to some of his hacks like the one where they had to tie themselves up).

Learning the origin of the Knappett was an indelible moment though.

Season 7 is my all time fave, not a single person I didn't enjoy on there. Season 9 very strong as well, if only for making David Baddiel seem vaguely bearable.

after watching the outtakes, I noticed there's not a lot of in-studio comity and interaction in the current season, nobody selling each other's jokes. Chloe is making an effort at least, but I miss the good vibes of the Mantzoukas season and the last season.

yup, otm

1-2-3
Time to make steam
If you don't

this season sucks

Ayoade may be the worst contestant they have ever had.

immediate contender for "which season greg and alex are the star" poll

so far in this series ayoade is the british version of j. mascis.

Ayoade may be rubbish at the tasks but he's still pretty funny, Matt Lucas just seems lost half the time.

Ayoade is going beyond not trying at the tasks, which lots of older contestants like Jo Brand or Sanjeev Bhaskar did, to intentionally failing at the tasks as a way to express contempt for the format

I like Chloe, Isy, and Nina a lot.

Ayoade is going beyond not trying at the tasks, which lots of older contestants like Jo Brand or Sanjeev Bhaskar did, to intentionally failing at the tasks as a way to express contempt for the format

Yes, I know haughty disdain is the guy's shtick but in this show it just feels lazy.

Love Isy, didn't know Chloe but agree they're carrying the show, Nina just kinda there but then 90% of the time she doesn't get to do her actual work anyway.

Ayoade has way too well-defined a comedic persona for this show and he refuses to break kayfabe. Shtick works really poorly on this show.

I think it's funny!

I think some of my favorite contestants were not high effort but still somehow pulled out great results... that's kind of my dream for Ayoade. Iannucci was sort of masterful at riding that line.

I am not at all mad at Ayoade because he is doing a hat I would probably try to do as a contestant

I very much think people get cast for specific reasons on these shows and so far both Ayoade and Lucas are fulfilling what I imagine their briefs to be. I think the problem is that both of those briefs are antithetical to the bickering family vibe that I think a lot of people have dialed into with previous Taaskmaster casts (this idea being heavily influenced by just finishing series 16). Probably that vibe would survive one of them but not necessarily both, particularly with personalities like Nina and Isy who are IMO absolutely delightful but not particularly forceful. I (as a Taskmaster newbie) am just taking it as a different shade of what the show can be and I’m reserving judgement on the casting as a whole until the series ends because I am enjoying what they’ve presented so far.

he is doing a hat

Fuck doing a hat.

lol I hate autocorrect sometimes

this time it’s hilarious though

We got a veritable drawer machine.

are people just not aware of Ayoade's current dream job of slipping away to the world?