For all its lightness and commitment to doing the absolute silliest thing at any given moment, Taskmaster is a surprisingly precarious show. Unscripted apart from the bizarre, laugh-out-loud tasks from which it takes its name, it's a show that relies on compiling the best ingredients and placing them in exactly the right order. It's way harder than it looks.
Taskmaster almost always gets the recipe right, though, which means that when you see something on the show that feels like a step above, you're seeing something rather exceptional. I tuned into the premiere of Taskmaster Series 21 on Friday night (it's the best way to cap off a stressful week) and found something not just exceptional, but arguably among the best things this show has ever achieved.
For those who've somehow read this far and still haven't heard of the show, a quick rundown: Taskmaster is a comedy game show hosted by Greg Davies (as "The Taskmaster") and Alex Horne (the "Taskmaster's Assistant" and also the creator of the show). Each new season ("series" to the UK viewers) brings together five celebrities from the world of comedy, TV, film, and beyond, and puts them through a series of bizarre tasks, awarding points to whomever achieves the task the fastest or best. Short version: It's funny, it's unpredictable, and it's a balm for the soul.
Series 21 began in a very promising place. The show's very nature means that it's a difficult thing to coast by with, and the cast for this season is impeccable. You've got up-and-coming comic Amy Gledhill, legendary The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci, actress Joanna Page, comedian Joel Dommett, and stand-up turned Hollywood movie star Kumail Nanjiani. That's a great lineup, and they immediately have chemistry with Greg and Alex and with each other.
But Taskmaster is not just about chemistry. Cutting the show, pacing it out, and setting the stakes with each new task is vital to its success. You need the first proper task of the series to let us spend time with the new contestants, get to know their quirks, and you need the final task of the premiere to deliver not just charm, but spectacle. Series 21, Episode 1 starts very well, with a task that asks contestants to simply go and find a worm. That allows everyone to debate what "worm" means, and more importantly, lets us hear the Welsh-As-Hell Page say "worm" over and over.
It's a great start, but for me things really start to level-up when the t-shirt cannon came out. In a game that's basically glorified lawn darts, the contestants have to fire t-shirts at a target with the object of getting as many of them on Alex's body (he has to wear a different number based on where they land on the target) as possible. It's a fun task to watch, in no small part because you can imagine with incredible clarity how you'd go about it yourself. It's all just remarkably charming, even before individual strategies start to kick in.
Then there's the final task, a memory game in which contestants must lift up cups to reveal four oranges in a row. It's an all-or-nothing task, and given the size of the stage, also an extremely time-consuming one. I have no idea how long the raw footage for this was, but the editing team made it riveting.
Taskmaster is always an amusing diversion, something that feels good to have on telly while you're trying to unwind for the night. At its best, though, it goes far behind diversion, far behind even knee-slapping comedy, and into the realm of the sublime. The right combination of writing, casting, editing, and execution can produce a piece of Taskmaster history that leaves you not just delighted, but invested. Sometimes something magical happens with this show which turns its relentless silliness into something poetic. This is one of those times, and that means Series 21 is appointment viewing.
New episodes of Taskmaster arrive Thursdays on the show's YouTube channel.
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