Harsh Taskmaster is must-see TV
James Croot explains why you should be watching the funniest show on television.
More than 18 months after its controversial and somewhat chaotic launch, TVNZ’s bloke-skewed Duke Channel seems to finally have found its mojo.
It’s been a while coming, but the programmers seem to have finally found the right balance between United States and European sports, superhero shows and anarchic comedy.
For Duke regulars and channelsurfing newbies, Thursday nights have become its jewel in the crown. It offers a feast of British comedic panel shows, most of which have screened previously elsewhere – Comedy Central’s Duck Quacks Don’t Echo, Choice TV’s Travel Man.
However, there’s one fresh show that stands out and has taken 2017 so much by storm that TVNZ have been screening all the series back-to-back. Yes, believe what others have been telling you – Taskmaster (8.30pm, Thursdays and episodes are also available on TVNZ OnDemand) is the funniest show right now on TV.
Hosted by the absurdly tall and magnificently acerbic Greg Davies, each week it challenges five comedians to complete a series of eclectic and eccentric tasks. Now in its fifth season (we’re finally seeing episodes that are only two months, rather than two years, old), its seemingly simple formula offers guaranteed belly-laughs.
Part of its charm is down to the relationship between the former
"Five comedians with wildly different skill sets will have to live with excruciating embarrassment or discover they are skilled at pointless activities." Greg Davies
schoolteacher Davies (who awards points via the power of whim) and his assistant-cum-minion Alex Horne. The latter is the show’s timekeeper, on-task umpire and frequent prop, his meek and benign behaviour belying the fact that the show is actually his creation. It was he (a former Big Brother employee) who came up with the idea for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2010 (pitched as a ‘‘twohour drunken show’’ featuring footage of tasks carried out over the course of year) and then helped adapt it for TV in 2015.
Bookended by a competition for the best-themed potential prize (it might be the competitor’s most cherished item, or something that makes the most excellent noise) and an onstage challenge, the show consists of expertly edited sequences of the challengers performing their various tasks (mostly set around ‘‘the Taskmaster house’’ in London’s Chiswick) while a live studio audience watches on and Davies pithily dismisses their ‘‘pathetic efforts’’.
‘‘Five comedians with wildly different skill sets will have to live with excruciating embarrassment or discover they are skilled at pointless activities,’’ he deadpans in his opening season-five address.
Those competing across eight episodes, aiming to win the prestigious bust of Davies’ head, this time are Aisling Bea, Bob Mortimer, Mark Watson, Nish Kumar and Sally Phillips.
First time out, they have to tackle such delights as giving Alex a special cuddle, getting him from the middle of a small lake to dry land in a boat without paddles, scoring a basketball trick shot and fishing an item out of a fruitbowl from a set distance. The results and, more so, the attempts, are truly hilarious.
Hugs range from the use of chocolate cake to the setting of a car boot. It’s unlikely you’ll see someone attempt to score a basket with a grass rake and a crutch in too many other places and it is hard to forget the sight of Bea wading through the water in her Thunderpants, proudly pronouncing at the task’s completion that she did it with ‘‘dignity intact’’.
Pant-wettingly funny television that, if you haven’t seen it before, may just become your favourite new bingewatch.