Replace Greg Davies and drop the comedians: how to fix Taskmaster ...Middle East

When Taskmaster launched in 2015, it was exactly what the tired TV landscape needed. It found a dedicated fan base on Dave, then went mainstream when it moved to Channel 4 in 2019. This was a panel show that was not a panel show, awarding pointless points while an array of comedians took part in deeply silly parlour-game-style tasks.

You’d watch Mel Giedroyc filling as many different things into a bath tub as she could, or Mawaan Rizwan balancing drinks while not walking on the grass, and realise you didn’t always require alcohol to feel just a little bit happy-drunk. This was the kind of show that laid bare quite how strange it was to make your living as a funny person, and yet just how much of a pleasure the rest of us derived from those who did.

But then it went on and on (and on), and now it’s currently in its – wait for it – 21st series.

Can anything that runs for 21 series really still fire on all cylinders? More concerningly, is its very wackiness now beginning to, well, wack a little less?

Greg Davies, as presiding judge, is looking increasingly bored (and not just because looking bored is his headmasterly shtick), while clipboard sidekick and resident inventor-in-chief Alex Horne is clearly struggling to come up with ever more nonsensical tasks. Hardly surprising. Even the best jokes begin to pale when told over and over again.

And so, amid news that it has just been renewed for a further six series, Taskmaster is in need of an overhaul. This is how I’d do it.

Leave the house

What was initially brilliant – and brilliantly mad – about Taskmaster has become its Achilles’ heel: over-familiarity. Each series, we get the same thing from the same faces we see on every other comedy show – a Dara O’Briain here, a Daisy May Cooper there, a soupçon of Tim Key – all of whom undergo a series of experiments in a tiny cottage whose floorplan would look unimpressive on Rightmove.

An atmosphere of claustrophobia made sense when we were observing Romesh Ranganathan in one cramped room eating watermelon against the clock, and Frankie Boyle in another attempting to unravel a ball of string, but how many times can we watch these variations on a theme?

Why not lead them into unfamiliar ground, specifically out into the wider world, where the general public reside? Get them to do their tasks in shops, on high streets and on public transport – environments where anything can happen. Elements of surprise tend to be the best elements. This, the way I understand it, is basic chemistry.

Leave the comedians behind

I get it. Opportunities for the jobbing TV comic are few and far between. Taskmaster gives their talent necessary oxygen, and helps pay the mortgage. But no matter how much of a national treasure Bob Mortimer undoubtedly is, he’s more familiar to me these days than my own wife and children. And so while it’s undeniably amusing to watch Maisie Adam build a tower of bricks on a trolley and then push that trolley down a hill, how about demanding similar of someone who would likely baulk at such silliness?

Personally, I’d like to see Mary Berry – or Mary Beard, for that matter – insert a finger into their ear while standing on one leg, or – because why not? – BBC war correspondent Jeremy Bowen clap his buttocks in time to the national anthem.

It works for the the annual New Year specials – the most recent featured Sue Johnston, Hannah Fry and Martin Lewis – so why not cast the net wider for the normal series?

Make Greg Davies compete

Not permanently, of course! But just for a series, perhaps, to mix things up a bit. Let’s have Davies perch on one of the contestants’ chairs for a change, promote Horne to incumbent judge, and hand over the Taskmaster reins to another of television’s clever, maverick quizzing minds. Richard Osman would surely jump at the chance to inject his own slant, so too Victoria Coren Mitchell. Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross? Taskmaster alum Katherine Ryan might be the most inspired choice; she doesn’t seem to do anything without deliberately sly intent.

Best of all in this scenario, we’d get to see Davies flounder in compromising positions. And on television, there is nothing more entertaining than witnessing a ruler temporarily destabilised.

Simplify the tasks

If the show takes just one sliver of advice from me, then it should be this: pare it back. The masterstroke of Prime Video megahit Last One Laughing wasn’t when each contestant played their joker – in which they took to the stage in attempt to do something performatively funny (and often failed) – but while they were mingling in the kitchen area, with straight faces. No bells, few whistles.

Throughout Taskmaster’s history, Horne has gone to great – one might even suggest unnecessary – lengths to wrest humour from the most basic of tasks. In series 20, contestant Phil Ellis was found sitting in a caravan with his face deep in one bowl, and his bare feet in two others. Horne asked him what he was doing.

“What does it look like?” Ellis replied. “I’m rubbing my feet in gravy, and eating a mixture of chocolate sauce and crumbled-up non-product-specific biscuits.”

Personally, I laughed much more watching Joe Wilkinson get a hole in one with a potato. Similarly, in the current series, Armando Iannucci raises hilarity simply by attempting to send an emoji on his phone while simultaneously conducting a conversation IRL. Truly, less is more.

Streamline the brand

A surefire sign of too much success is an attempt to extend the brand. Following the sale of the format to 13 countries around the world, and a string of comedy awards (including a Bafta), an understandably buoyed Taskmaster branched out. You could now buy Taskmaster board games, Taskmaster coffee mugs; even Taskmaster Hawaiian shirts and socks. Overkill, much?

Clearly not, because in 2023 it joined forces with English Heritage to “bring a unique entertainment experience” to sites such as Stonehenge and Dover Castle. “Plenty of rubber ducks,” enthused the spokesperson at English Heritage responsible for “engagement and experience”.

It turned out, however, that people would much prefer watching Nish Kumar or Bridget Christie grapple with rubber ducks than do so themselves.

“Disappointing and overpriced,” according to one online review.

‘Taskmaster’ is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Thursdays

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