British Game Show TASKMASTER Keeps Finding New Comedic Heights
Great TV is rarely in short supply, but over the past few years no show has provided the same consistent super-charge of joy as an oddball British gameshow available, in its entirety, for free, on YouTube. Like any long-running creative endeavor, Taskmaster has had its ups and downs over the years, but even at its weakest this is a program that delivers television, comedy, and humanity at its warmest, silliest, and best.
The premise is simple perfection: Each series (season) a line-up of five comedians compete against one another doing a number of ridiculous tasks. The tasks range from the fiendishly complex (order a pizza without saying ‘pizza’) to the diabolically simple (get this egg as high as possible without breaking it). Later, the contestants have their performances scored from 1-5 by the titular Taskmaster, the hulking physical avatar of Done With Your Nonsense teachers everywhere, Greg Davies.
Controlling all the levers and layers of the game is creator, task mastermind, and in-show sycophantic assistant (Little) Alex Horne. Horne and company have, for 19 seasons (series) delighted in devising tasks that are as entertaining to watch as they are maddening-bordering-on-torturous to perform. Early series (seasons) occasionally strayed too close to hidden camera/prank show territory, but the longer Taskmaster has gone on, the more the show has created its own comedic universe, cut off from the public world and free of any encumbrances like good taste or personal dignity. The Taskmaster house is increasingly a space where contestants feel liberated to indulge their most gonzo impulses and ideas. Sometimes those ideas succeed, and sometimes they implode in gloriously silly fashion. Either way, you’re laughing. And usually laughing pretty damn hard.
Without trying to get overly deep on this very silly show, part of the ongoing success of Taskmaster after almost twenty seasons (series) is the way that the very simple set-up creates a space for boundless creativity. No matter how rudimentary a task might seem (fill this glass from the furthest distance away; unroll this ball of string) Horne and his team can find ways to insert devious complications and trapdoors. Even when there are no tricks in place, no two contestants ever approach the same task in the same way. On Taskmaster, ingenuity and idiocy sit side by side not just within the same episode, but within the same person. You never quite know which outcome a given task will inspire: A contestant who has humiliated themselves week after week might suddenly dazzle with the perfect out-of-the-box approach to the latest challenge, while a contestant who has done well all series (season) might completely faceplant on an assignment the others breezed through.
While Taskmaster has never been afraid to go grandiose (one Covid-era season [series] saw the show treat an empty airport like the world’s largest playground), Taskmaster is forever at its best when the tasks are the kind that can be easily replicated with your own household items. Pineapples, eggs, balloons, marbles, arts and crafts supplies, random nonsense you might find in any shed, all have been put to legendary use on this show. Even as you laugh hysterically at another adult shredding every last scrap of dignity in the name of scoring arbitrary points in a meaningless contest for a silly TV show, you also can’t help but wonder: “How would I fill that glass? How would I stop that soccer (football) ball from scoring? Would I spot the trick Alex planted in the background and beat the task? Or would I miss it and end up exhausted, half-naked, shame-faced, and covered in goo of varied and indeterminate origin?”
Taskmaster chugged along for 18 seasons (series) with a remarkably consistent record of success. Of that run, the only ones I don’t love to revisit are the episodes produced during the Covid pandemic. Through no fault of the production team or the various cast members, the empty studios and enforced social distancing put too much of a damper on the raucous and communal atmosphere of the show.
Even by Taskmaster’s high standards, though, the recently finished season (series) 19 was something special. The combination of comedians Fatiha El-Ghorri, Mathew Baynton, Rosie Ramsey, Stevie Martin, and especially Jason Mantzoukas proved to be a lightning bolt of energy that made Taskmaster’s weekly episode drop absolute appointment viewing.
Series (seasons) often take a few episodes for the cast chemistry to really gel, but here the whole gang fired on all cylinders from the very jump. Whether it was El-Ghorri alternating between abject dismissal of the show and barely restrained lust for Davies or Baynton steadily losing his mind even as he racked up multiple wins, each contestant had a clear comedic game that only escalated as the season (series) progressed. More than that, the chemistry between the cast was the sort of magic that can’t be predicted or planned. For ten weeks, Taskmaster viewers got to enjoy a group of people who truly seemed to be having the time of their lives, a feeling that proved infectious.
And no one appeared to be having more fun in this, or any, series (season) than Jason Mantzoukas. A well-known actor, comedian, and podcaster, Mantzoukas has built a legendary reputation for himself in certain comic circles as a fearless improviser and force of unhinged anarchy. His stock and trade on programs like The League and Brooklyn Nine Nine is bug-eyed psychopathy, with a seemingly limitless reserve of maniac energy he can tap into at will. Turning him loose on a bunch of Brits and the rigid format of Taskmaster was the equivalent of the proverbial bull in a China shop, assuming the bull had just done a bunch of cocaine and was strapped with a belt of lit firecrackers for some reason. (Little) Alex Horne is known for building tricks into the tasks, to which Jason responded with an approach that can best be described as, “I’m not trapped in here with you, you’re trapped in here with me”. Whether he was demolishing the set every chance he could, holding Alex hostage for hours, begging to get onto the roof or allowed out into oncoming traffic, or breaking tasks easily via various tools and gadgets he brought, Mantzoukas treated Taskmaster as a license to run amok in the margins of British politesse, and it could not have been funnier. Unless he somehow gave a bull a bunch of cocaine and strapped it with lit firecrackers and set it loose in a China shop, which I honestly by the end of this season (series) would not have put past the man.
So what have we learned today? Well, we’ve learned that some things do get better with age, and that sometimes Americans treating foreign nations as an excuse for a multi-stage demolition derby can actually yield positive results. But really, the main takeaway from Taskmaster is that right now there is no way to quantify or qualify the value of delivering uncomplicated joy to an audience. On Taskmaster, you see us at our silliest, our cleverest, at our most happily shameless and exuberant. And if this most recent run was any indication, we can expect the show to keep delivering on that front for many series (seasons) to come.
