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

First half of the episode maybe the best ever.

Relatively simple tasks, but they led to some great responses.

yeah, classic TM tasks

idk how much of the American crowd watching this show is aware of the LEAN/Six Sigma type of training companies push on employees, but i've pitched multiple segments of this to trainers. the recent Iannucci tennis ball task was an absolute textbook example.

the Joel self-inflicted task would have been masterful if the egg was involved

the dumping the entire bucket over the net was a good idea but she just did it too early - spend the time getting rid of his balls until the last 5 seconds and then just tip your bucket onto his side.

(opposition balls off the side of the pitch didn't seem to count, so you didn't have to return them, just punt them left or right)

Armando just walking right up to the gong had me cheering, the kind of perfect loophole you hope to see once or twice a season.

Could listen to Joanna's ac-CENT all day.

I've been cracking myself up around the house by randomly announcing "EYE have brought ELEVEN CURLY WURLYS." my spouse is less amused.

the winner handed out the curly wurlies at the end and there looked like mild panic from alex as if to say 'whatever you do, don't eat them'

i love an old-school loophole, it feels like they have really tried to discourage them with more precise task writing but i miss them. when we were watching that task my daughter (11) and i were discussing how many potential loopholes there were in that task and she called out the one armando used before he did it.

this series is fine. i love joel and joanna bc they are chaotic in different ways, everyone else is just OK. it's not really a very interesting combination of contestants, everyone is mildly incompetent in similarly affable ways.

It really needs one more person who wants points as much as Kumail does, but I'm having a good time and looking forward to the finale. The flip flop forfeits were pretty classic.

Armando really needed that one to regain his reputation as someone with a brain in his head.

We wondered if anything at all could break Joel's spirit before he had to sit in his pants listening to his own voice for an hour. Even then he just seemed so cheery in his pissed-off-ness. I don't know I could be around people as unfailingly lovely as him and Joanna for any length of time without wondering what's wrong with them, but an hour of them on my telly is great. Amy's effortless shamelessness is great too - I think she really nails the kind of "oh look, aren't I naughty" vibe that Lou Sanders tries too hard to convey without it seeming contrived.

wow at the new contestants list

(and he has given 5 points to everybody before - it was repeated just recently - the recreate artworks task with babatunde doing banksy, jack dee as van gogh, sidi doing klimt...)

I can’t imagine Richard Ayoade being good on Taskmaster. I can’t imagine him letting go and really getting into it. He’s too arch and detached. Mind you, I couldn’t imagine Julian Clary joining in properly either, and in the end he was pretty good.

Matt Lucas (Gladiator II), Richard Ayoade (Photographer at wedding in The Life & Death of Peter Sellers)

lol

Ayoade was on celeb Catchphrase the other day, which i caught by accident. was coming second to Joe Swash of all people, sneaked into the final round, did badly.

but him and Izy are two of my favourites. taskmaster might be out of their area of expertise though, yeah, it's a different set of skills

worthy winner last night though

(although obv i don't like isy enough to get her name correct)

<3 final outcome of Joel’s egg task

My household has a hatred of Matt Lucas from Bake Off, but my Ayoade-obsessed coworker is very excited.

Loved this series, but wish one of them would have matched Kumail's competitive energy. Since no one else was quibbling, obviously the funniest thing for Greg to do was to punish him for it, but c'mon, it's a show about pedantry!

wow i am familiar with 4/5 of the upcoming contestants, that has to be a record (though i only know conti from old tv appearances like black books)
i also found matt lucas very annoying on bake-off. i have some weird mandela effect thing where i swear he was canceled for sexual misconduct but then i don't see anything about it online? maybe i'm conflating him with walliams? idk
ayoade def has his schtick but i usually find him funny and taskmaster will hopefully push him out of his comfort zone

It was Walliams who was accused of sexual misconduct but Lucas is still working with him. Ayoade is a Linehan apologist

Chloe has been on about 3 things in the last fortnight.

(hignfy, zombie mock the week, that escape room thing on a team with gamble and saunders)

I feel like Ayoade's shtick of smug superiority will give Greg a good target.

Ever since seeing this episode of GMGMSB I've had "seconds of what? OF TIME!" stuck in my head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IAqFhJU-aM

That was the best episode so far.

Joanna's unedited toilet plunger/snake story on one of the outtake clips is a must-watch.

Absolutely! It's understandable because of the format but it's a shame the actual aired episodes didn't do her raconteur skills justice.

https://www.vulture.com/article/kumail-nanjiani-is-a-taskmaster-cautionary-tale.html

I don’t feel like I watched the same series as the author of this article

Their total inability to understand the koala tee joke says it all.

Ah shit I didn't think ahead enough to realise the US media class getting into Taskmaster means they will eventually drain all enjoyment out if it with shitty thinkpieces.

Very thankful that it's paywalled for me

i am a longtime taskmaster fan and i agree with that article that kumail was bad

Aw, I thought he was great, and the rest of the lineup let him down by failing to pretend that TM points are the most important thing in the world. It was maybe the first series where you had 4 people just happy to be there and not arguing their case very much, so that Greg and Alex had to lean into the "we're all just having a nice time" bit. It was a funny bit, but I thought Kumail was properly committed (and had lots of great moments).

Love the idea of Joel being deeply offended that Kumail stole his unique trademarked humorous bit, the pun.

I just don't see that it's a problem worthy of a state-of-the-nation, here's-where-it-all-went-wrong article, even given the context of Vulture and clickbait and so on. He was no better or worse than loads of other contestants. If the writer had higher expectations of him based on his fame, that was very much their problem.

Also, the “he’s so famous” bit was funny

I didn't think that Kumail was amazing, but he was nowhere near as bad as that Vulture piece makes out, and it gets a very disapproving hmmmm from me. Jason was a particularly fantastic contestant, I agree with that.

The article is written like Kumail spent every episode thoroughly shitting the bed and ruining the show and… he didn’t? In fact, he felt very much a part of the show and the contestant camaraderie that is integral to the show’s appeal.

I prefer Kumail tbh, Jason was great and all but I feel like American viewers like him because they know him, and UK viewers like him because he's leaning into the American stereotype.

I can kinda see how Mantzoukas might fit into a stereotype through being loud and crazy but I can't say I ever thought "haha, typical american" when watching him at all!

yeah he was certainly gesturing towards that stereotype at points but it also just overlaps with his comedic persona generally.

I am a longtime Kumail skeptic and I loved him on this season, thought he was a great fit for the format & had good chemistry with everyone.

That writer seems really hung up on an idea of "Kumail Nanjiani the ultrafamous superstar with carefully-managed public image". And idk, admittedly I'm out of touch with that stuff, I know he's very famous and was in a Marvel movie and all that. But that article reads like it was written about a Taylor Swift or Tom Cruse type celeb whose every move and utterance are always deeply calculated. Like:

Nanjiani shared his allegedly unedited search history, which was full of porn and name searches of himself, with Horne. “Do you have to put that in the show?” he asked Horne afterward. Was Nanjiani genuinely worried about what the “reveal” would do to his career, or was it a bit about the gilded cage of fame that he pitched?

...like, it doesn't occur to this person that maybe he was personally embarrassed that the person sitting next to him was looking at his porn habits? (Or that it was even real in the first place?) I guess it makes sense that a Vulture TV writer would not be able to turn off their "fame discourse" brain, but yeah I really dont recognize the show they think they watched.

Kumail was solid enough I thought but the rest of the cast was just superb.

that is an extremely pointless and overwrought article. One of Kumail's best moments was the crowd chanting "Pakistan", which doesn't fit into the thesis

I loved the last episode, everyone was delighted that Joanna won, everyone was delighted to have been taking part. Probably the most heartwarming cast ever.

yeah, I loved everyone in this cast. one of the finer series of the bunch, great vibe in the studio, every player had their own thing and it worked v well

the repeats have just done series 19 (baynton etc) Which someone somewhere (perhaps here) said was a series too far but which was great. and it's now on series 20, maisy, rhys, basheer which feels fun on a rewatch.

it takes them about 3/4 of a year to repeat everything now (20 series, 10 episodes each*, 5 a week) and I'm happy to watch them on a loop like this.

(* early series were shorter. but there are champios series as well)

i only wish the 2am repeats weren't bleeped

Really hope this becomes fully watchable in the US (or easily youtube bootlegged)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5ZOlNv6YNs

anyone have a rec for the best australian season?

I've only seen 2 & 3, enjoyed them both but 3 was better.