Taskmaster Treat — Cultural Digest #7
Why I adore this panel show of sublime silliness
I first started watching Taskmaster during 2021. A friend of mine, the wonderful comedian and actor Mawaan Rizwan, was starring in the latest line-up, so in the spirit of supporting him and trying something new I dived in to Series 10 with a slightly scrunched up face but an open heart.
I knew very little about Taskmaster at that point. Was it a gameshow? Was it a panel show? Was it a quiz? Greg Davies was one of the hosts and the person who presented my BAFTA at the 2020 virtual ceremony, I knew that much! But I got the sense that it was heavy on the juvenile teenage boy humour so I wasn’t naturally drawn to it.
I pressed play tentatively and sat back in my chair, a little stiff with scepticism. I wasn’t sure what was going on initially. It was like an arts and crafts show meets hide and seek meets a celebrity roast. I also didn’t immediately twig how much the staging and format of the show had shifted because they filmed that particular series during covid. This visually impacts a few of the series but in no way curtails the content of the show, which has now returned to its original format in front of a live audience — it looks as though it’s filmed in one of London’s historic theatres and though the first series was staged at the Clapham Grand, it is now filmed on a replica set at Pinewood Studios.
For those that don’t know Taskmaster, five contestants — who are usually people already known for being funny, although the show also makes a habit of making household names of lesser known comedians too — have to complete a series of tasks, competing individually as well as within an assigned team.
Most of the tasks have been pre-recorded and skilfully edited weeks before but the contestants will be watching their efforts back for the very first time live along with everyone else, ready to cheer them on or condemn them with schadenfreude accordingly — the contestants have no idea how well or not they’ve done until this time. Apart from the team tasks, the contestants film everything in isolation. There is a strict code of honour amongst them and they are not allowed to discuss their tasks until the studio playback.
Like Fleabag, Taskmaster began as a show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2010 which perhaps is why it remains framed in its theatrical setting. The contestants have been plunged into a blood red auditorium, they are seated in alphabetical order on highly decorated red velvet gold framed chairs, in front of a highly decorated golden proscenium arch. In the true conceit of theatrical staging, they are also positioned diagonally so that they are both facing the audience as well as their judgement — Greg Davies the Taskmaster, a 6’ 8” behemoth of a man, sat on his intentionally oversized red and gold throne. He too will be watching everything for the first time, arbitrarily presiding over and scoring all of the tasks during the recording. He is sat alongside Alex Horne the Taskmaster’s Assistant, on his much smaller, lower, servile red gold equivalent. He is the knowingly kowtowing Taskmaster’s Hand (and also the creator of the show). Behind them, a screen the height and width of the building they are sitting in will display the tasked attempts in larger than life humiliating fashion.
The early series had fewer episodes but ten is the standard now. They record more tasks than ever get shown so that the final edit is the best of the best but there are five tasks per episode, three of which will be a selection from the pre-records and two of which will take place live in the studio. They range from the sublime to the ridiculous (but still, always, sublime). In the first episode that I saw, I watched my dear friend Mawaan struggle in genuine earnest without any irony whatsoever, to put helium into an egg to make it float. I ploughed on in my own earnest after that and quickly found myself working my way through every previous series, all of which are available to watch on demand on All 4 in the UK. I hoovered them up in a matter of weeks.
Whether it’s the outrage at the Joe Wilkinson potato task, Lou Sanders disguising herself in a bin, Lolly Adefope casually sitting on £2,000, Romesh Ranganathan devouring a watermelon, Noel Fielding camouflaged as a banana, Liza Tarbuck parachuting a wooden spoon, James Acaster’s definition of circles, I cannot get enough of this show. And it’s in the attention to detail as much as its celebrity guest stars: the black and red flocked wallpaper in the studio, the house that starts to feel like your own, the high as you can get gsm immaculate cream card wax sealed tasks, themselves.
It keeps evolving too. It was on Dave, it’s now on Channel 4. In addition to the regular series, there are now New Year’s Specials and Champion of Champions editions. They recently announced Junior Taskmaster. As I write this I am listening to the Taskmaster Podcast presented by Ed Gamble (another former contestant) with the cast members of series past and present, delightfully popping in to discuss their own TM experience. There’s also the Taskmaster People’s Podcast with Lou Sanders and Taskmaster fanatic and statistician Jack Bernhardt. On YouTube you will find endless compilations of unseen footage and outtakes and best bits along with full episodes — all totally legit by the way, they’re on the Taskmaster YouTube channel. There’s a board game and a book. The UK version is aired all over the world but has since been sold to other territories to create their own versions under various pseudonyms, lots of which can also be watched online though I couldn’t possibly tell you where… but needless to say it’s a hit, and the sort of moreish activity that once you start you cannot stop.
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Taskmaster is the embodiment of silliness. Eggs and rubber ducks feature heavily — aptly, as it really does capture the fun for fun’s sake of the Fun Fair. It is simplistic but accurate to draw countless metaphors from it for the mirror it holds up to humanity. The whole thing is utterly futile and pointless but simultaneously glorious. Comedian Frankie Boyle, who is one of the current series’s cast describes it as a show about humility and humbling. It appeals to precisely the same part of my brain that loves Wordle (and Quordle, Octordle and, my only this week discovered, Waffle), escape rooms, board games, nineties point & click adventure games and even Richard Osman’s House of Games — a former TM contestant himself and arguably the first to exploit the semantics of the tasks and find lateral thinking loopholes, which have since become a mainstay of the show in more recent series.
It would be remiss with all that’s available online to not include a clip so here’s a compilation of highlights from one of my favourite contestants ever, Mike Wozniak:
It feels almost like a John Kearns level of tasked betrayal to pick out a favourite series because each and every one of them has made me gut-splittingly laugh and they are all so uniquely brilliant, but Series 7 is the one I go back to the most and Series 14 made me choke on my own spittle. At the time of writing they are halfway through airing Series 15 and it too is superlatively superb.
It is childlike painting on the wall chaos, sometimes destructive, born of an extraordinary level of imagination, starring some of the funniest people on the planet. I sort of want to define it as highbrow stupidity, if it’s possible for such a thing to exist. So if all or any of those things appeal to you I imagine Taskmaster will too. Juvenile teenage boy humour? Perhaps, but judging by my own reticence turned obsession, there’s some of that in all of us. It already had a cult following but I am now proudly deep in the ball pit of its joy simultaneously trying to calculate the number of balls in the pit, amongst them.
Do you watch Taskmaster? If yes, do you have a favourite moment, or cast member, or task? Have you played the game or read the book? I’d love to hear from you!
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