America’s ‘Taskmaster’ Obsession No Longer Has To Wait

One of television’s great pleasures over the last decade is the UK series Taskmaster, hosted by Greg Davies and his sidekick (and the show’s creator), Little Alex Horne. I’ve seen every episode, some multiple times, because when we have houseguests, we often pull up our favorites to introduce the series to others.

It’s an unbelievably fun and funny show where comedians perform bizarre and often challenging tasks while being judged by Greg Davies. The winner hardly matters—except that they get to appear in a Winner of Winners episode every five seasons—but it’s strangely fun to root for favorites anyway. Not that the best players usually win. Last year featured Jason Mantzoukas, the first American-based participant (though not the first American-born, as readers like to remind me—that was Desiree Burch). He was a phenomenally fun and chaotic player, but also terrible at the game. Not that it mattered.

In the early years, it wasn’t always easy to find episodes of Taskmaster in the United States (Reddit was helpful). More recently, however, the show has been uploaded to YouTube, first unofficially and now on the official Taskmaster channel.

This year, episodes will appear on YouTube just an hour after airing in the UK (it’s on Channel 4 at 9 p.m., available in the U.S. at 5 p.m. EST, 2 p.m. PT). That should make it easier for the show to be a global water cooler moment—not that I watch them right away. We prefer to save them and binge. This season’s players are, as usual, a mix of vaguely familiar faces to American audiences (Reece Shearsmith and Sanjeev Bhaskar) and several people most Americans won’t recognize (Ania Magliano, Maisie Adam, Phil Ellis). But that’s also part of the joy of Taskmaster: discovering new British comedians who inevitably pop up in other UK panel shows we stumble across in our YouTube and Instagram feeds. By now, there are dozens of familiar UK faces I first saw on Taskmaster, and it’s always a delight to see them again.

Anyway, here’s my all-time favorite task.

Taskmaster returns with its 20th season on September 11th in both the UK and the United States.