Taskmaster

image c Dave

Taskmaster
5 / 5

Series: Two
Aired: 2015 - Present
Channel: Dave
Writer: Alex Horne
Cast: Alex Horne, Greg Davies et al

Dave have completely fucked up how I review comedy. Completely.

Taskmaster is not clever, it is not witty (there are moments), it has not changed my overall outlook on life like my other favourite comedies but it has made me laugh so much I genuinely thought I was going to die. I really wanted to mark it down: a 3 at the most, just because I want to be strict with my ratings and judge it accordingly, but my gosh it's been three episodes and I've not laughed this much since I last watched The Rik Mayall fall down the stairs dressed as Kilroy Silk in Bottom.

Taskmaster is the brainchild of Alex Horne, a wonderful comedian I have loved for a long while now, who had an Edinburgh Fringe show of the same ilk: making other comedians do funny stuff for laughs. It's the most basic principle of any comedy I've come across: five comedians do silly tasks and Greg Davies rates them. The tasks range from eating as much watermelon as you can in a designated amount of time, or creating art using a GPS tracking system (spoiler alert: nobody made a penis.) It's simple, it's quite panel-game-show-esque, but it really, really works.

I'm going to say now that even though I also love The Rik Mayall-lookie-likie Greg Davies (he also looks like the contenstant Paul off of GBBO by the by), reducing Alex Horne (whose idea the show was in the first place) to a basic servants role (doing the points, holding a tablet with a stop clock on it, standing about in general pulling amusing faces) has annoyed me, but he's obviously not a big enough name to be anywhere near hosting it. That's fine, at least he's in there somewhere, but it's a huge shame and I think it would have been an incredible platform for him to showcase his skills without his usual Horne Section.

Dave is a very blokey channel. They claim to be the home of Witty Banter (whatever that is) and their one and only self-created Sitcom was a flop (in my not-very-humble-extremely-non-professional eyes), and their repeats of Scrapheap Challenge are even starting to get on my nerves, but I cannot deny my enjoyment of Taskmaster. When Romesh destroys that watermelon some weird voodoo chemical reaction happens and I am happy. Yes I am. When Roisin takes 55 seconds to find a knife I am in the state of nirvana. Ecstasy is never far away. It has it's dodgy moments: I think the scripted "banter" is probably the biggest let down and at first I was unsure about whether the same five comedians could take it throughout the entire series (though now I love it since it's clear Roisin isn't actually as useless as she first appeared to be).

But dear Belzebub I nearly died laughing and even though I preach about wanting clever, intellectual and above all meaningful comedy, sometimes you just gotta laugh until you wet yourself and then give it 5 stars.