Why you should watch 'Taskmaster,' the funniest TV show you've never heard of
It's the holidays, and you're at a relative's house. You have to find something to watch that pleases multiple generations and sensibilities, is actually entertaining and is available on whatever streaming services this house happens to have. Your time starts now.
Let’s face it, it’s hard to pick a crowd pleaser over the holidays. In fact, it’s hard to just plain pick a TV show to watch any old night of the week in our era of near-infinite choices on streaming services, cable and network TV. So as the weather gets more frightful and families start to gather, I am here to humbly suggest one TV show that's guaranteed to make your lives easier, and distinctly funnier.
“Taskmaster” is the funniest show on TV you’re not watching, and it has been since 2015. It’s probably the funniest show on TV, period. And there are 16 seasons, all streaming for free on YouTube, to brighten your life.
What is “Taskmaster,” you ask? It’s a British game show that features five comedians doing silly, absurd and hilarious “tasks” that range from eating as much watermelon as possible in one minute to piloting a barge through an obstacle course to playing a game of charades across a river while wearing giant foam fingers. Then comedian Greg Davies, the “Taskmaster,” awards arbitrary points on their performance.
“It's a comedy show where five comedians are in a competition and there's no script,” says Alex Horne, the series’ creator and onscreen “Taskmaster’s assistant.” He sits next to Davies on the set and accompanies the comedians on their far-flung tasks, offering pithy comments and point totals while acting as a foil to Davies’ oversized persona. For many seasons Davies has only referred to his colleague as “Little Alex Horne” (Davies is 6-foot-8 inches tall, while Horne stands a mere 6-foot-2).
Each 45-minute episode is divided into five such tasks, some pretaped and others completed in front of a studio audience. The comedians often can't explain their actions during the ridiculous missions, such as why one tried to turn a cement mixer into a sausage dispenser or why, when the Taskmaster instructed them to paint only with their feet, another used his whole body.
“We all take it preposterously seriously,” Davies says. “We sort of cage them in a little bit. So they're doing silly tasks to no end. We're just putting them in a big Petri dish.”
That’s part of the charm of the series. The stakes may be so very low (comedians compete for prizes they bring in themselves and a trophy modeled after Davies’ head), but the emotions run very high. All of a sudden it becomes a matter of life and death to build a parachute for a wooden spoon or to push a giant rubber duck into a lake. And while most of the contestants aren’t known to American viewers, (save for a few “Great British Baking Show” hosts who've popped up over the years), it doesn’t really matter. You get to know these people intimately throughout each season. In fact, you see them at some of their most raw and vulnerable moments.
Split into short segments, gleefully unhinged and unfailingly funny, “Taskmaster” is ideal escapism. Instead of scrolling TikTok, you can pull up a single task, which offers five to 15 minutes of good (mostly) clean fun. Some tasks have all the sophistication of a clown throwing a pie in someone’s face, but there’s a reason physical, absurdist comedy is so indelibly a part of our culture. It is often the funniest, most primal way to get a laugh. When you see two comedians wandering, blindfolded around a golf course as a third tries in vain to direct them toward a target using only three-word instructions, you might laugh so hard you feel it in your bones. With that kind of laughter, the problems of your life and the world can, at least momentarily, slip away.
“It's constantly surprising when people say, ‘oh, it's really helped me through a difficult time’ because we're not trying to be this warm saccharine program,” Horne says. “There are lots of elements of it that are quite mean or rude.”
“You could see it as a benign ‘Hunger Games,’” Davies jokes. But in all seriousness, “people want to be part of it and have a bit of silly escapism.”
So yes, watching a comedian build a coconut-flinging machine is a net positive for the universe. And it might just make your holidays go that much easier.