Taskmaster is currently my favourite show

I am obsessed with Taskmaster right now. I was listening to BBC Radio 2 recently, and Greg Davies and Alex Horne came on to talk about the new series. It sounded intriguing and I am a big fan of Greg Davies. (And now, Alex Horne.) I heard some of the comedians that had been on the show and immediately knew it was worth a watch.

Taskmaster is now starting series 11 and I had missed the entire show so far. Living in Southeast Asia is great but as I have mentioned before, apart from Netflix, most streaming services are rubbish here. So how was I going to watch it?

At the very least, I thought I would watch a Taskmaster trailer on YouTube to get a better idea of what it is all about. That was when I discovered that the entire show is on YouTube. This seems to be happening more and more these days and it is a great thing. I will even pay for YouTube if this trend continues.

What is Taskmaster about and how does it work?

Brilliant question. Each season, five comedians (mostly) are set a series of tasks that are usually pretty ridiculous and funny as fuck. Alex Horne wrote and designed the show and he plays sidekick to the Taskmaster himself – Greg Davies.

The tasks are sometimes pretty simple – make this block of ice disappear, or eat this raw egg or watermelon in the fastest possible time. Other ones are weirder – hi-five a 55 year old or order a vegetarian pizza with pepperoni, bacon and no tomato sauce, but without saying the words ‘vegetarian’, ‘pepperoni’, ‘bacon’, ‘tomato sauce’ or even ‘pizza’.

What makes the show so funny is how the comedians go about the tasks. Their personalities are really different and as each Taskmaster series goes on, you can almost predict how they are likely to go about the tasks. One will be logical, one will be weird, one will cheat, for example.

Why am I writing all this when you can just watch it?

Another brilliant question. As I said, the whole show is on YouTube. This link will take you to the Taskmaster page.

But I can go one better. In case you’re lazy, here is the Taskmaster pilot episode. Enjoy.