Wednesdays, 9pm,
Dave
Great stuff, our favourite new show of the last X years returns to Dave for an eight episode run, where five more comedians will put their problem solving, comedy and gamesmanship skills to the test. This series we have (from left to right in the promo shot):
- Bob Mortimer
- Mark Watson
- Aisling Bea
- Nish Kumar
- Sally Phillips
This post is a bump from the Wednesday previous as the first episode has been up on UKTV Play so you may want to wait until after the first episode has gone out before reading the comments if you don’t want to be spoilt.
Edit: Two-part Champion of Champions special for the run-up to Christmas announced.
A serviceable first episode with some fun moments, although I’m not sure I’d have chosen these tasks as the ones to kick off the series with. There was one nice ‘aha’ moment, and missed possibilities for at least two more (ROT13: gurl pbhyq unir xabpxrq qbja gur onfxrgonyy ubbc gura xvpxrq gur onyy guebhtu; naq va gur yvir gnfx, gurl pbhyq unir fgnlrq va gurve punve ohg fuhssyrq vg sbjneqf).
Had both the same thoughts in regards to the workarounds. Wonder if either of those would have been against rules, but as no-one took them, no need to mention it?
A fun episode all round, particularly surprised by the first main task, that’s the sort of ‘cast look like they’re having a breakdown’ one you’d expect half way, but nope, you open with… whatever it was that they all did for the hug.
Boat one was a nice change of location/scale for a task, stood out nicely too.
Looking forward to the rest of the run!
So I get the feeling Bob, Aisling and Sally are all *really* gunning for it, this is going to be a competitive series.
I’d go further and suggest that episode one points to there being no weak links (e.g. people relying on slacker humour) at all, which would be impressive. I wouldn’t put it past the tasks being selected to give a particularly competitive first episode.
It’s not a direct cause-and-effect, but Nish Kumar’s performance on ROHoG (ugh, what an acronym) has got me looking forward to him on Taskmaster…
I agree with all above points ^
There’s a non-spoilery bonus task here:
https://youtu.be/KSYmkxkEzXY
2 part Christmas special champion of champions with all 5 champions just announced
Oh my, I was hoping for something of that ilk. Does that mean the winner wins Greg’s torso?
I quite liked the idea I read on Twitter (apparently by someone on here) that given failure on this tends to be quite funny they should have done a Loser of Losers special instead.
Someone suggestion Series 25 will be followed by Champion of Champion of Champions
I think that’d have to be curated in some form, rather than just going with the lowest scorers, because I don’t think all the players who scored the least were the most entertaining in doing so – for instance, I’d probably want to put Hugh Dennis in there, but he didn’t actually come last in his series.
Just having a look, the people who came bottom each time were:
* Roisin Conaty
* Joe Wilkinson
* Paul Chowdry
* Lolly Adefope
I think you’d get value out of most of those, although you probably wouldn’t call it a classic line-up.
I don’t know who’s going to finish last this season but I would give any of this season’s five a good chance against the other four last place finishers. (Not to say that some of them didn’t have their moments…)
I’m glad that the winners will face off for the crown but 2 parts is a little short. Should of been at least 3.
I dunno, I think that’s probably just enough tasks that they could do within a day or two of filming for each celeb. Seems fair enough. I just think it’s cool they thought of doing it AND managed to get everybody to agree to come back. Should be a nice treat.
I won’t spoil, but ep2 is up now as well. It’s a good one, some ‘yup, that’s a Taskmaster task’ ones in there, funny moments, good workarounds, and a lot of swearing from Nish.
Ooh, interesting. Also quite unusual for UKTV Play to continue with this past ep one.
They did this for Red Dwarf around this time last year. But as this is not back until October this might be the replacement show that they have chosen to fill it.
Just about everywhere I work I suggest posting clips online when large chunks are cut from a programme, as it’s a shame to waste them. They almost never do so it’s nice to see Taskmaster posting their bonus material. Here’s an outtake from Sr5 Ep1:
https://youtu.be/Kb1lxtOyEFo
Ha ha, love this. There were some good ones last series as well.
A couple more have gone up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnSUzcPK574 – Alex introduces a swearbox
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fatNGatM9c – Bob talks balls
I’d love to know why I’m not quite feeling this the same as I usually do. I mean I’m still enjoying it but the tasks are beginning to feel a bit… formulaic? It’s not like there’s a duff contestant this time round either.
I still like it, it still makes me laugh but…
Kinda get where your coming from
There seems to be a lot more tasks where they get 10 or 20 minutes this time, so I wonder if it’s harder to pick out funnier stuff from that instead of the one hour tasks of old.
I’m quite enjoying the beach tasks so far, in that the house tasks are starting to feel a little samey in places. But then again, I absolutely loved the rainbow painting so I guess you take the rough with the smooth.
Episode 3 up on UKTV play wonder if there going to continue upping it each week
Thanks, I’d presume if they’ve come this far they probably will.
Good tasks in episode three.
Bob’s businessman is my highlight of the run so far. Genuine ‘hit pause as I’m laughing too much’ moment for it. Properly hit it’s stride for ep3.
I was laughing quite hard at Sally Phillips and the funnel.
I would happily watch Aisling and Alex intently staring at a jelly sliding down a pole for all eternity.
The cucumber task is absolutely inspired. Regardless of what people think about padding or off-target bits, the fact that they can come up with genius stuff after 5 series is well worth the price of entry in my book.
I think the detail of what they changed was really clever. Easy enough to flip a few small things on the surprise, but what they chose to and that mix goes to show the wit behind the show.
It should also be noted that going into the last ad break, Alex was replaced too 🙂
Yes, that they chose to spend money on a throwaway gag like that shows they really care about packing as much entertainment into the time as they can.
Of course, the hack for this game was to spend your 2 minutes saying “X had changed, Y has changed, Z has changed…” for everything you could see.
Champion of Champions tickets now going:
http://www.tvrecordings.com/shows/view/61
This series is really good; episode five has one of the all-time highlights. Which of Sally Phillips’ other projects show her being most like she is here?
I’m a big fan of both episodes where someone is set a task nobody else gets and people doing quite well but failing on technicalities.
Moving to Wednesdays and putting every episode up a week in advance has really thrown me off course. I really dislike the fact that viewers aren’t necessarily on the same page, it makes discussion quite hard. I’ve got last week’s, which went out yesterday to catch-up on and also next week’s which I’ll need to catch-up on despite the fact it’s not been broadcast yet.
Hate it.
They’re not putting episode eight up early, in case you were wondering.
Finale! A good series I thought. Little shame not to have the £20 present task but I figure it’s been done a lot so you’d need a twist on that to make it difficult.
But of the finale tasks, the music task was a really fun conclusion with an actual nice entry and some incredible lyrical choices from Bob.
(Episode on TV was followed by a quick trail for the Champion of Champions special, no task footage in it, archive plus Alex putting up some new decoration on the Taskmaster house, for anyone watching OD)
Yes, a good series, though I think I prefer the shorter series as I find eight eps slightly overlong.
Overall, it did feel like there were many opportunities for thinking out of the box – even fairly basic stuff – that were missed by this set-up, and perhaps fewer tasks that lent themselves to lateral thinking. That said, the rainbow painting task is in my list of all-time favourites.
It’s interesting how both this and last series seemed to backload their better tasks. I wonder if that’s luck or judgement.
Anyway, pleased with end result (“Rosalind’s a fucking nightmare” absolutely killed me), can’t wait for Champion of Champions.
Series 6 Prediction time!:
– Bec Hill
– Limmy (Brian Lomond)
– Sue Perkins
– David O’Doherty
– Josie Long
I would love to see Johnathan Ross as a contestant. Vegas would be another good one. For good chances I would see which celebrities are following the Twitter channel of the show.
I think there are some good shouts there. Limmy would be fascinating although I think he’d walk it. Josie Long feels inevitable. I’m not a fan, but Taskmaster made me appreciate Noel Fielding a bit more so you never know.
Also I suggest you watch the last leg tomorrow night as they are apparently doing a mini taskmaster with Greg Davies.
Excellent series – and a touch of The Mole with Alexander’s crowbarring fish references when watching Sally carrying out her tasks.
As for future contestants, I’d have thought Vic Reeves is now highly likely to appear (if only to get one back over Bob) also, given comedy and lateral thinking, Danny Baker would be extremely good value.
Interestingly I don’t think Vic would do it, doesn’t feel like his sort of thing (also can’t see him playing second fiddle to Greg) whereas Bob is much more of a free agent and seems more keen to get involved with things if they look entertaining.
Could see Danny Baker being entertaining, although whether he’s Dave enough is a different question.
I think health and physical exertion might be an issue for DB, to be honest.
He did I’m a Celeb last year! Has he relapsed or something?
Also Mortimer’s only just got over a several heart-bypass!
Last night I went to the RTS event about the making of Taskmaster, which I see Chortle has written about and Brig has retweeted. Very interesting it was too, with Little Alex Horne and some of the production team. When we arrived we were all given envelopes and halfway through we were asked to open them and the four with golden tickets were invited up on stage to do a live task – which was the longest-continuous-and-best-noise task. I didn’t get one, obviously.
Anyway, it was all very interesting. As Chortle mentioned, they showed the Powerpoint that Alex made when he was pitching it to Channel Four, when they suggested it could feature people like Kirstie Allsopp and Bear Grylls. I got the impression they were thinking of doing it live as well. And as also mentioned, in the first series Dave requested they filmed it in a way so it could be shown in any order, until they realised halfway through it had to be shown in that particular order. They also said that they didn’t film the pilot until after they’d recorded all the tasks.
They also mentioned the task that never worked, which is of course the task to burst as much bubblewrap as you can, which they filmed for series one, two and three before they realised that there’s only one way to do it, just stamping on it. They also pointed out that the other problem was that at the end of it they actually had to count the bubbles, which took ages. What was quite interesting is that in the first series they had an idea that after they’d all done it, Alex would come on in a steamroller and burst them all, before they realised that actually didn’t work either. Apparently they have done it in the demented-sounding Swedish version (the one where one of the other tasks was to make a train sound its horn) where someone did find another way to do it, by pouring petrol on it and setting it on fire.
Alex said he’d been to a recording of the Belgian version and very much enjoyed it. Despite, or because of, the fact he couldn’t understand a word of it.
Oh, I was there too. Sorry I missed you. I knew i should’ve asked on Twitter who was going.
Never mind. We didn’t do the networking anyway, we were knackered.
As lots of people assumed they pick the tasks for each episode to engineer close finishes, it’s pleasing to discover that they actually don’t, and really with so many subjective tasks you probably couldn’t anyway.
I’ve been thinking for ages if you could “fix” Taskmaster, and I think the conclusion is, unless you have loads of tasks in which people are clearly disqualified you can’t. A large percentage of the show depends on the mood of Greg on any particular show, which is great, and occasionally the reliance of the ongoing “story” which I don’t think anyone could predict during filming etc.
*really hoped someone recorded this event and it turns up on YouTube (but I doubt it)*
Did Alex go into the very specifics of the recording of the series?
I’m assuming that each contestant films all their challenges at the Taskmaster house over a couple of days (so the majority of series is recorded over two weeks) – and unless it’s a team challenge (or singing a sweary song about a random woman) they first time they see each other is at the recording of the show at Pinewood?
Hi Mart, please email me at david (at) qwertyuiop (dot) co (dot) uk.
From memory, there’s more recording than you think. I believe he said it was one day per contestant, per show – that’s quite a while, but they have to record 40 tasks five times each. And yes, he definitely said that until they meet in the studio, they are sworn to secrecy (although, of course, they may well see each other professionally before then for other reasons).