Taskmaster is the funniest thing on television and you can start anywhere
A format so simple it sounds unpromising: comedians complete pointless tasks badly. Twenty series in, it has not run out.
Five comedians are given absurd tasks — get this egg as high as possible, impress a mayor, eat this watermelon as fast as you can — and are judged arbitrarily by a man with no interest in fairness.
Why it does not get old
Because the comedy comes from the people, not the format. The tasks are a device for exposing how someone thinks under mild pressure, and that is inexhaustible: the over-planner, the person who misreads the brief, the one who finds the loophole.
The best moments are almost always someone’s reasoning going wrong in a way that is completely characteristic of them.
The structure
Tasks are filmed months in advance, then played back to the contestants in a studio, so you are watching people react to their own failures in front of an audience. That layer is what separates it from every other panel show.
Where to start
Anywhere. Series are self-contained with a new cast each time. Series 7 and 9 are the usual recommendations for first-timers; the one you should not start with is series 1, where the format is still being worked out.
The caveat
It is British and some references will not land. It does not matter — the tasks are universal and the confusion is the point.
Start on
Series 7, episode 1. Hour-long episodes, and it is the rare show that is genuinely better in the background than most things are in the foreground.
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Twenty-two minutes, well spent
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