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

HAhahahah yes. I love his energy, he's clearly aiming for Best-of-all-time TM contestant in the most upbeat and fearless manner.

Crucially he's not looking for a Taskmaster bump in Assembly Rooms ticket sales.

Haven't seen ep2 yet but I'm assuming that Mantzoukas, as a TM fan, is fully aware that they will not let anyone one that roof and that it's therefore safe to keep asking.

See ep 2

We've just watched the first episode of the new series (very much enjoying Alex correcting Jason's Americanisms), and it's looking like a good one if Fatiha would just get into it a bit more. Pealympics was loads of fun, classic Taskmaster highs and lows all round.

I haven't been able to catch up on the new eps because we're watching s13, and my wife doesn't want to have to remember more than 5 British people at a time. But s13 is fantastic, swiftly becoming one of my favorites.

Yes, KILLER cast. Sophie Duker! Judy Love! Bridget Christie! Even Ardal O'Hanlon was a dream!

This cast is great, Fatiha was right on the line of seeming genuinely angry to be there for the first couple but it's settled into a good bit.

it's a GREAT season

Fatiha was great this week, really appreciating her now. Feels like a classic series.

Another pretty great episode I thought. Love how baroque the tasks are getting.

Yeah, they're all great. Going to miss this lot when they're gone, but already anticipating a Robins/Zaltzman/Baynton champion of champions bit of telly gold.

Sam Campbell won S16 as well. not exactly a diverse CoC.

e4xtra repeats have just finished S17: McNally / Robins / Mohammed / Willan / Pemberton and they were mostly good entertaining, apart from the first. and next up is S18 Zaltzman / Aléshé / Sidi / Dee / Jones which might be a bit too recent to enjoy.

this season has been a stone cold classic. i really hope this gets more US comics involved going forward because Mantzoukas has easily established himself as one of the all-time great contestants.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DKMutzEsFP5/?hl=en

The Jason B-roll must be hundreds of hours long

it's not taskmaster related, but for those who want a fantastic gateway in the Mantzoukas-verse, i cannot recommend this enough

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nwi_kE0gy94

I want Jason's painting

Mantzoukas is the best. He's pretty funny here (recently), too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ0WNAd5264

The cast is great but I'm not always feeling the magic this season. A lot is being made of how chaotic this group is, but some of the tasks are so rife with extra rules designed to short-circuit their brains and create a general chaos-scape, it doesn't leave a lot of room for creativity. The campfire task was a good balance, but the other ones in this ep didn't really work for me. We went back to season 5 (I've seen it, my wife hasn't) and it was like a breath of fresh air.

I started this show from the beginning a few months ago — we're on S8 now — thanks to this thread, and S5 is definitely a high point (put in relief by S6 being basically the only true dud I've seen so far) in terms of a good and balanced cast. Also Sally Phillips is extremely surprisingly unhinged

She's so great (read that she was going through a divorce and lived very close to the Taskmaster house, so it was a welcome outlet).

I've skipped around but want to watch S8 next, since it comes in between two classics.

for non-interesting reasons we watched S9 after starting S8, and yeah 7 and 9 are classic. S8 is a lot more low-key but still pretty good

i'm really into the new series. i don't know that it's the "most unhinged cast ever" or whatever but it's a likeable crew. i agree the tasks are getting a lot more ornate but that seems to be a necessary response to people coming in having seen previous series, or people like jason who are clearly scholars of taskmaster. they've got to come up with things they haven't done before but also close loopholes.

I've skipped around but want to watch S8 next, since it comes in between two classics.

i feel like there are haters of s8, there are some strong personalities in that cast that turn some people off (iain and lou), but i like it. it also has the task that i would most like to do myself (the one in episode 1 at the trainyard with alex on the bridge).

Paul in the phone box in that episode is just amazingly funny.

Bayton comes a little close to the 'middle aged white guy who takes it too seriously and smugly wins too often' archetype at times, but otherwise a very solid lineup.

Feel like Stevie Martin is the weak link - almost as unfunny as all-time worst contestant Josh Widdicombe.

(actually Iain Stirling might run Widdicombe close)

Martin seems ok to me. I'm with you on Widdicombe hate but Rob Beckett is worse.

Beckett's likeable performance on Last One Laughing has led me to retrospectively reassess his oeuvre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ei-z3iUp14

Stevie fits into the 'not particularly funny but very likeable' category for me.

I like her a lot on this. She's enthusiastic and happy to be ridiculous, which is what you want.

Easy target, but Russell Howard much worse than any of the aforementioned.

Yeah, Stevie is very likeable and funny. Russell Howard and Joanne McNally easily my least favourites. I also remain completely impervious to the appeal of Judi Love.

Oh yeah Russel Howard, he's terrible. Get him and Beckett mixed up a lot tbh.

A friend of mine who worked for Deliveroo for a spell brought something to Howard's apartment once. He did not tip.

Bayton comes a little close to the 'middle aged white guy who takes it too seriously and smugly wins too often' archetype at times,

I think he's the opposite of smug here, he literally threw the last task, in part because he didn't want to be seen as that guy imo.

I wasn't sure about Judi Love at first but she added so much to the group dynamic, you could tell everyone was dying laughing at her justifications and bullshitting.

Baynton does have a hall of fame task outfit. i have zero complaints about the contestants so far this year - i think they did a really good job of getting a diverse group to bounce off each other. and the studio segments have been great! mantzoukas and stevie lying down pretending to be star gazing high schoolers, the repeated callbacks to stevie's annoying song in the last ep...

Yeah, Baynton doesn't seem smug to me at all. But I am quite a sucker for disarmingly charming intelligent folk with a bit of mischief.

Jason and Stevie are top-tier teaming.

i'm still a bit behind but so far the joy of baynton to me is that he seems competent and capable and willing to put in effort but often still somehow manages to end up falling flat on his face

Aww

https://www.reddit.com/r/taskmaster/comments/1l2bc0g/alex_meets_a_100yearold_taskmaster_contestant/

Easy target, but Russell Howard much worse than any of the aforementioned.

a million times this.

TM is magical in how it gets me to reconsider comedians on the tedious panel show circuit, and see their true magic - even Rob Beckett! But now Russell Howard. What a charisma- and laugh-vacuum he be.

I have no idea how Russell Howard got where he is and how he has stayed there. Him, Paddy McGuinness and Micky Flanagan just baffle me.

how was rosie stopping the water coming out of the bucket? that hole was huge.

been a couple of good end tasks lately. the blowing task and the tennis-ball-and-spoons...

the safe combination task though, the hidden clue seemed very obvious

My favourite final tasks of the show are ones you could imagine playing yourself with your nephews and nieces at Christmas.

Flicking around for something to watch the other night I ended up streaming an episode of the The Horne Section and it was very much Not Good. Possibly I chanced upon a bad episode, but it did make me think of how I like TM almost despite Alex? Obv he devises and writes it all and so has ultimately been responsible for some of the best telly of the last 10 years. But I remember it took me a long time to watch TM because I couldn't get past the pre-task banter between Greg Davies and AH - it made me wonder what kind of public school fagging experience he was trying to get over? I have a similar reaction to watching him on No More Jockeys, even though, again it is in itself a great game. I think possibly he is one of those creative geniuses who maybe just shouldn't be on camera himself?

Yeah, I find the Horne Section unwatchable, but I absolutely love Alex's commitment to allowing contestants to completely humiliate him. I suspect the intro bantz have gotten more extreme as the years have gone by as the original master and minion distinction has grown legs and they've run fairly far with it.

I don't mind the Greg and Alex banter at all. It's just that the skillset for Taskmaster isn't the same as for writing fiction.

watching Community, series 6, episode 4 and there's Jason Mantzoukas as the director of Karate Kid with Alison Brie and Ken Jeong. he looks a LOT like nish in 2015...

In 2019 they went to a Halloween party dressed as each other:

https://i.ibb.co/4Zkg5JmG/nishzoukas.jpg

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4242872/mediaviewer/rm3596541441/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk