A topic for Taskmaster, the funniest show on television.

[polishgenius]

 On the right board this time.

Made in honour of the new season (featuring Lee Mack and other hapless funsters), airing now. For those already in the know, let's watch and laugh. For those not in the know, watch the first episode of the latest season below* (second one is also up) and join us in watching five entertainers perform some very random tasks like trained seals for the pleasure of ourselves but more importantly the judge, jury and executioner of the show, Greg Davies.
And also watch the entire back catalogue, which is up (apart from one season I think) and is consistently hilarious.

*if you're not in the UK. British lasses and lads you'll have to go to... more4 I think? Whatever the catchup service is called.  But British lasses and lads presumably all already know if they like it or not.

 
 

For those who want a shorter taster of what the show is like from an earlier season watch this legendary moment

 

 

[ljkeane]

Taskmaster’s great. I think the high point for me was Phil Wang doing an entire season in a disturbingly tight fitting Bruce Lee inspired jumpsuit.

[BigFatCoward]

Everyone i know who has similar taste to me raves about this. I love most of the people who they have on, but I just don't get it. 

I've tried so many times to get into it and I just can't. 

[polishgenius]

7 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

I've tried so many times to get into it and I just can't. 

 

 

Shame. Shame. Shame.

 

1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

Phil Wang doing an entire season in a disturbingly tight fitting Bruce Lee inspired jumpsuit.

Wang's wang.

That was an excellent season. Probably the most chaotic overall crew to date.

 

[john]

Love Taskmaster. I hadn’t realised the episodes on YouTube were just for foreign viewers, I just thought they were being really generous about putting stuff up for free.

Anyway, best champion - Bob Mortimer, best moment - Joe Wilkinson potato throw, best costume - yes, Phil Wang’s jumpsuit. Also Daisy Cooper screaming at Richard Herring for not seeing she was drawing a hippo using only horizontal or vertical lines was genuinely frightening.

[Heartofice]

Love it. Haven’t watched it in a while because quite frankly some of the latest seasons haven’t lived up to many of the great contestants of the past.

Rosalinds a nightmare with Bob Mortimer and Asling Bea is my highlight 

[DaveSumm]

20 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Love it. Haven’t watched it in a while because quite frankly some of the latest seasons haven’t lived up to many of the great contestants of the past.

 

Yea it is one of those shows that’s only really as good as the contestants. I think season 2 was my favourite. 

[Heartofice]

Has anyone seen the US version? I’ve heard it’s horribly misjudged.

[polishgenius]

8 hours ago, john said:

 

Anyway, best champion - Bob Mortimer, best moment - Joe Wilkinson potato throw, best costume

 

My favourite task so far is the exotic sandwich task in Noel Fielding and co's season.

Lou Saunders is my favourite contestant I think. But been a few excellent ones.

It definitely rests on the strengths of the cast obviously, but not been a season I've really not liked yet. DMC was the only contestant I really haven't liked but the rest of her season's cast was excellent and her petulant anger did have some moments too.

[Lightning Lord]

Love Taskmaster!

I agree about Daisy May Cooper. She just didn't seem like she wanted to be part of the show. Like she couldn't be arsed to try the tasks or to react to/care about the points.

Recency bias: Loved Season 8. Iain Stirling was soooo into it (maybe too much?). Loved that level of commitment, but also reflection. Sian Gibson and Lou Sanders were ducking hilarious. Paul Sinha was also great. And fun tasks. Loved it.

Asling Bea was fantastic in her season, but she's just always awesome.

[Heartofice]

The show is very good at creating an atmosphere where I’m allowed to like people who I ordinarily wouldn’t watch. 
 

That was my first introduction to Nish Kumar, who is painfully unfunny at the best of times but that kind of worked on this show because Greg could just rip into him. There have been a number of pretty sub par comedians who come out looking pretty good on the show, like Iain Sterling or Ed Gamble 

But at the same time the show has attracted some serious comedic talent, Bob Mortimor of course is a national treasure and should be on every show going!

Think probably earliest seasons were the best? But then think the Phil Wang one is a highlight too. Depends on the chemistry between the contestants 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Heartofice

[DaveSumm]

55 minutes ago, Lightning Lord said:

I agree about Daisy May Cooper. She just didn't seem like she wanted to be part of the show. Like she couldn't be arsed to try the tasks or to react to/care about the points.

I haven’t see that season, but that sounds awful. I bailed half way through the Jo Brand season cos I got the same vibe from her. It’s quite childish, the “you can’t fail if you don’t try” attitude. The show’s best when the contestants are funny, but also really want to win and are truly competitive.

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I haven’t see that season, but that sounds awful. I bailed half way through the Jo Brand season cos I got the same vibe from her. It’s quite childish, the “you can’t fail if you don’t try” attitude. The show’s best when the contestants are funny, but also really want to win and are truly competitive.

 

Daisy May-Cooper was the worst part of both of these. Half the time she'd roll out not bothered, especially with the item task, other times she'd get over the top and seemingly genuinely peevish- and at one stage literally screamingly angry- over doing badly. She wasn't season-ruiningly bad but she was annoying.


Ian Sterling was fun because he was similarly overly competitive during the tasks themselves, especially the team tasks when he could be unpleasant to his team, but then went through a week-by-week personal awakening that apparently his whole life he'd been a wanker while watching himself back on tape.

[john]

Daisy May Cooper had an intensity to her that was impressive. She’d get her head down and just do the tasks, which is often the way to win. Witness the garage door task when you had to throw things through the door as it was opening or whatever. She was the only one who tried to do that in an orderly way. She was just let down by her prize tasks, where she just seemed to grab the first thing she saw in her house that broadly fitted the category and didn’t even try to argue it in the studio. If she’d collected more points from that round she’d have easily won.

I’ve now seen the latest episode. I very much enjoyed the arguing in less than ten words task and the final most to least studio task. Mike Wozniak is looking very good. Don’t know much about him except he co-wrote Man Down for Greg Davies. He seems like the perfect contestant, funny and creative but genuinely tries to win every time. And he apparently drinks 37 pints of milk a month.

Already some dodgy point rewards from Greg, as there always is. Jamali Maddix successfully argued last week that Charlotte should be disqualified from the rat catching task for not being three metres away as stated in the task, conveniently forgetting moments before in his clip we’d seen him ask Alex to edit his hand out as he caught the rat.

Edited March 27, 2021 by john

[Plessiez]

I like Taskmaster a lot, though I've not been quite so keen on the last couple of seasons (that is, 9 and 10; I've not seen enough of 11 to judge yet but I think it's looking good so far and I agree that Mike Wozniak in particular has been great).  Season 5 is probably my favourite, but I also liked Joe Wilkinson's potato throw, Mawaan Rizwan's vanishing act; and James Acaster's increasing fury whenever he had to do a team task with Rhod Gilbert.

Agree that the quality of different seasons varies a lot based on who the contestants are, but I also think that the more recent seasons have been slightly affected by the fact that there's now a "real" prize for winning (I don't think people in the first five seasons knew that the season winners would be invited back for a special, did they?).  I think that's definitely encouraged a slightly more competitive (and occasionally dull) approach from some people (including, I feel, both the winners of seasons 9 and 10).  

Iain Stirling being ultra-competitive and repeatedly talking up his chances of being on the Champion-of-Champions special was funny, but only because he was often actually doing terribly (although I think he finished second that season, so he can't have been doing that badly).  When people have the same focus on winning and do well, I think it's less amusing.

15 hours ago, john said:

Daisy May Cooper had an intensity to her that was impressive. She’d get her head down and just do the tasks, which is often the way to win. [...] She was just let down by her prize tasks, where she just seemed to grab the first thing she saw in her house that broadly fitted the category and didn’t even try to argue it in the studio. If she’d collected more points from that round she’d have easily won.

Yeah, I don't really agree that Daisy May Cooper wasn't trying to win.  Her prize tasks were almost all terrible, but (unlike Jo Brand, who really didn't seem to be trying at all) she definitely made an effort in all the other tasks.  Thought she was slightly unlucky not to win the season, even without getting much from the prizes.

15 hours ago, john said:

Already some dodgy point rewards from Greg, as there always is. Jamali Maddix successfully argued last week that Charlotte should be disqualified from the rat catching task for not being three metres away as stated in the task, conveniently forgetting moments before in his clip we’d seen him ask Alex to edit his hand out as he caught the rat.

Yeah, Jamali should have been disqualified for that one (but, in the same episode, I thought he deserved a lot more than two points for his cushion-spinnning trick, so I guess the two things more or less cancel out).

[Heartofice]

I think there are a few contestants who just don’t get the show, trying hard to think of examples now but there are a few who just do the bare minimum or the most obvious answer to a task.

The best contestants are the ones who think outside the box and go completely creative 

[polishgenius]

36 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I think there are a few contestants who just don’t get the show, trying hard to think of examples now but there are a few who just do the bare minimum or the most obvious answer to a task.

 

 

I'm feeling a little for Sarah Kendall in the current series coz she seems to have cottoned on watching the other's attempts what the show is actually meant to be like and is having to spin that into a persona and use it as her bit in the studio bits. She's doing quite well to be fair, she's funny on the stage, but her live tasks so far have been largely dry.

[Plessiez]

I've liked this series a lot so far, but that airport security task was a mess.

[john]

I think Greg is totally bamboozled by Jamali “doesn’t give a fuck about Taskmaster” Maddix. This week he told him in the prize task that he’d “settle for three points” for his non shocking child’s bike. Meanwhile Charlotte gets last place for her fairly lame but at least meets the remit bucket of ice.

[Ran]

I've never seen a full episode, but many clips. Seems funny enough to me, in its odd-ball way. I'm most impressed by how game and unflappable Alex is to do whatever bizzare thing the contestants ask him to do. The episode where they were supposed to poke a surprising object out of a hole in the ground as a case in point: