Taskmaster

Comedians are given very strange things to do.

Alex Horne's mind is a strange place. All of the usual elements are there, but they're all mixed up. He makes hot toothpaste pies. He plays golf with hen's eggs. He draws horses while riding horses.

But a problem shared is a problem halved, so Horne has invited some comedy friends to perform these surreal dreams. Greg Davies hosts the programme, ranks the performances, and the best player over the programme (and over the series) is the winner.

The players from Series 1: Ranganathan, Skinner, Conaty, Widdicombe, Key. Seated: Davies and Horne.

Taskmaster is theatre of the absurd, sensible people doing insensible things. The atmosphere was heightened by the filming location - almost all the tasks took place in a hired cottage, decorated as a shrine to the Taskmaster. There was no narration over the films, just the natural sound of the players talking.

Fans of bizarre television flocked to this show, and it gained audience as the first series went on, and as each subsequent series aired. Taskmaster turned into a massive hit for Dave, their first since Argumental about five years earlier. After five years, during which the format was honed to perfection, UKTV's contract expired and the show went up for new bids. Channel 4 bought the rights; ignoring adjustments for COVID-19, about all they changed was the credit sequence.

Pre-watershed editions were made of each episode, which wasn't too much trouble for the most part. When aired on E4, these editions were aired as Taskmaster Bleeped. These evidently went down well, so much so that Channel 4 announced a Junior version, with Rose Matafeo and Mike Wozniak doing Davies' and Horne's jobs. This comprised five heats, with the winners and runners-up from each competing in semi-finals and the winners and runners-up from those joining the highest scoring third placer in the final.

Champion of Champions

New Year Treat

2015

• Frank Skinner
• Josh Widdicombe
• Roisin Conaty
• Romesh Ranganathan
• Tim Key

2016 (Summer series)

• Doc Brown
• Joe Wilkinson
• Jon Richardson
• Katherine Ryan
• Richard Osman

2016 (Autumn series)

• Al Murray
• Dave Gorman
• Paul Chowdhry
• Rob Beckett
• Sara Pascoe

2017 (Spring series)

• Hugh Dennis
• Joe Lycett
• Lolly Adefope
• Mel Giedroyc
• Noel Fielding

2017 (Autumn series)

• Aisling Bea
• Bob Mortimer
• Mark Watson
• Nish Kumar
• Sally Phillips

Champion of Champions

• Josh Widdicombe
• Katherine Ryan
• Rob Beckett
• Noel Fielding
• Bob Mortimer

2018 (Spring series)

• Alice Levine
• Asim Chaudhry
• Liza Tarbuck
• Russell Howard
• Tim Vine

2018 (Autumn series)

• James Acaster
• Jessica Knappett
• Kerry Godliman
• Phil Wang
• Rhod Gilbert

2019 (Spring series)

• Iain Stirling
• Joe Thomas
• Lou Sanders
• Paul Sinha
• Sian Gibson

2019 (Autumn series)

• David Baddiel
• Ed Gamble
• Jo Brand
• Katy Wix (but see Trivia)
• Rose Matafeo

2020

• Daisy May Cooper
• Johnny Vegas
• Katherine Parkinson
• Mawaan Rizwan
• Richard Herring

2021 (New Year Treat)

• John Hannah
• Krishnan Guru-Murthy
• Nicola Coughlan
• Rylan Clark-Neal
• Shirley Ballas

2021 (Spring series)

• Charlotte Ritchie
• Jamali Maddix
• Lee Mack
• Mike Wozniak
• Sarah Kendall

2021 (Autumn series)

• Alan Davies
• Desiree Burch
• Guz Khan
• Morgana Robinson
• Victoria Coren Mitchell

2022 (New Year Treat)

• Adrian Chiles
• Claudia Winkleman
• Jonnie Peacock/Alan Davies
• Lady Leshurr
• Sayeeda Warsi

2022 (Spring series)

• Ardal O'Hanlon
• Bridget Christie
• Chris Ramsey
• Judi Love
• Sophie Duker

Champion of Champions

• Ed Gamble
• Kerry Godliman
• Liza Tarbuck
• Lou Sanders
• Richard Herring

2022 (Autumn series)

• Dara O'Briain
• Fern Brady
• John Kearns
• Munya Chawawa
• Sarah Millican

2023 (New Year Treat)

• Amelia Dimoldenberg
• Carol Vorderman
• Greg James
• Mo Farah
• Rebecca Lucy Taylor

2023 (Spring series)

• Frankie Boyle
• Ivo Graham
• Jenny Eclair
• Kiell Smith-Bynoe
• Mae Martin

2023 (Autumn series)

• Julian Clary
• Lucy Beaumont
• Sam Campbell
• Sue Perkins
• Susan Wokoma

2024 (New Year Treat)

• Deborah Meaden
• Kojey Radical
• Lenny Rush
• Steve Backshall
• Zoe Ball

2024 (Champion of Champions)

• Dara Ó Briain
• Morgana Robinson
• Sarah Kendall
• Sophie Duker
• Kiell Smith-Bynoe (see #Trivia)

2024 (Spring series)

• Joanne McNally
• John Robins
• Nick Mohammed
• Sophie Willan
• Steve Pemberton

2024 (Autumn series)

• Andy Zaltzman
• Babatunde Aléshé
• Emma Sidi
• Jack Dee
• Rosie Jones

2025 (New Year Treat)

• David James
• Hannah Fry
• Martin Lewis
• Melanie Blatt
• Sue Johnston

2025 (Spring series)

• Fatiha El-Ghorri
• Jason Mantzoukas
• Mathew Baynton
• Rosie Ramsey
• Stevie Martin

2025 (Autumn series)

• Ania Magliano
• Maisie Adam
• Phil Ellis
• Reece Shearsmith
• Sanjeev Bhaskar

Some of the most memorable solo tasks included Josh Widdicombe counting the numbers of beans, spaghetti hoops, and grains of rice in their respective containers during the ad breaks, Mel Giedroyc trying to hide a huge inflatable ball on a football pitch from Alex, and Mark Watson sending 150 anonymous cheeky text messages every day for five months. The last of these received no points after managing to fall short by two.

Another amusing solo task involved Tim Vine being given £150 to buy stuff from a stationary shop to make an outfit in 10 minutes and his opponents guessing what pun he went for. (Levine, Chaudhry, Tarbuck, and Howard went for "Pulling into the train stationery", "Stationary man", "Choo Choo ch'you beauty", and "train stationery" respectively. It was "tracksuit"...)

But the most memorable solo task of them all has to be the one that backfired. On one episode, Aisling Bea was given a golden pineapple and tasked to take a bunch of photos of it in esteemed company for six months, but instead of doing the task herself, she actually sent the pineapple to her mother who did the task for her for the whole duration.

On occasion, contestants had unique rules to abide by. These included Rob Beckett having to spend a task trying to sweat in an eggcup also talking in an accent other than his own, Joe Lycett spending a task painting Greg on a canvas without touching the circular mat also smiling throughout, and Mark Watson spending a task taking a lit candle on a cupcake through an obstacle course to the caravan also not saying any words that contain the letters from the word Taskmaster.

There were a number of occasions when contestants were disqualified. These included Joe Wilkinson, who managed to throw a potato into a pot in 14.3 seconds but scored no points after putting the end of his shoe on a mat... and after his fellow contestants were unable to come to a decision as to whether he should score or not. Dave Gorman once cheated by sticking a pea inside a tennis racket and pretending to hit it and then cheated again by pouring his tea into a bucket when transferring water from another bucket. (The latter didn't even take place during the task; the whistle had already blown.) But the most memorable disqualifications happened in the tenth series during a task in which liquid had to overflow in an eggcup on top of a wobbly pole, on account of "all five were"...

Bob Mortimer, Aisling Bea, and Sally Phillips' less than affectionate tribute to an unwitting victim called Rosalind in the final task of the fifth series.

The entirety of the seventh series, with James Acaster's many breakdowns during his tenure on the show, Rhod Gilbert being Rhod Gilbert, and Jessica Knappett falling off the stage during a live task. You can find the whole series playlist here on YouTube.

Ed Gamble losing his marbles during the "Draw the same drawing alongside the person behind you without communication" live task after David Baddiel carried on drawing as Ed left his drawing finger behind David's back. A similar task on the following series featured Daisy May Cooper drawing three lines of an animal, Richard Herring trying to guess what that animal was, and Daisy getting increasingly frustrated after each attempt and laying into Richard after running out of guesses.

"All the information's on the task." Wozniak liked to top his spiels with "Ultimately, this is a show about".

Alex Horne, who also wrote and produced the show.

The Horne Section.

Incidental music by Dru Masters.

Based on a stage show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2010 and 2011.

In early series, judgement was pronounced at the Clapham Grand theatre. Later series used a proper studio set.

Series 1 participant Tim Key was retained for future series as a Task Consultant.

One of Alice Levine's task attempts had to be so badly censored that the censored version had to add a line to explain just how much had been taken out. Way to spoil the illusion.

Just as they had done with Penn & Teller: Fool Us, The CW bought the eighth series in 2020 with a view to producing a remake. It lasted one episode before being hauled off to CW Seed and replaced by Supernatural reruns.

Kerry Godliman, Katherine Ryan and Alan Davies covered for Katy Wix, Katy Wix and Jonnie Peacock in the ninth series' fifth episode, the ninth series' sixth episode, and the 2022 New Year Treat respectively. Godliman's subsequent Champion of Champions appearance made her the contestant with the most appearances.

For the first series, the trophy was a bog-standard off-the-shelf trophy, while subsequent series winners took home a golden replica of Greg's head. Champion of Champions episodes forked over a replica of the rest of Greg's body. Josh Widdicombe won the first series and the first Champion of Champions series, meaning that - as of the 2022 episode - Richard Herring and Dara Ó Briain are actually the only owners of Greg's whole body. It could have been worse; Mae Martin was not available when the third Champion of Champions was filmed, and so their place was taken by that series' runner up Kiell Smith-Bynoe.

The first half of series twelve suffered from a number of broadcasting failures; the Bleeped version of its premiere was aired by accident on first broadcast, while episodes two to five aired without subtitles as a result of residual technical errors following an activation of the fire suppression systems at Red Bee Media's broadcast centre.

As of the first fifteen series and excluding New Year Treats, Romesh Ranganathan, Joe Wilkinson, Sara Pascoe, Aisling Bea, Nish Kumar, Phil Wang, Judi Love, Frankie Boyle are the only people to never win an episode. Wang's, Love's, and Boyle's failures were that bit more abject than the others as they lost ten episodes rather than six, five, five, eight and eight episodes respectively.

In 2023, a pilot was shot for a culinary version, with five celebrity contestants competing to please series nine winner Ed Gamble. They called it Foodmaster.

The seventeenth series was tailed by Taskmasterclass, a clip show narrated - not even presented! - by Greg and Alex.

At least three of the stooges hired for tasks went on to make further television appearances; the aforementioned Rosalind (keep up!) went on to appear on The Chase, while Lyndsey and Louise - who had been hired for a series 20 task - went on to comprise two thirds of a team on The Neighbourhood.

U programme page

Channel 4 programme page

Wikipedia entry

British Comedy Guide entry

taskmaster.info, a database about Taskmaster around the world.

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