'Taskmaster' is a perfect summer show (and the funniest thing in decades)

USA Today

a day ago

I'd heard of Taskmaster before 2025. But it took Jason Mantzoukas to get me to watch beyond some random YouTube and social media clips.
Taskmaster is a British show officially in its 19th series, though eight other specials have been produced. The premise brings five extremely funny people together to compete in a series of, uh, tasks. The tasks themselves are all wondrously stupid in bafflingly clever ways. Paint a picture despite not being let into the room where the canvas is. Sniff out a phone covered in cheese using only your sense of smell. A whole segment called the Pealympics in which everything revolves around doing things with peas (and, at one point, carrots) that would result in psychiatrists being called in had bystanders seen it in the wild.
In the wrong hands, this would be a series of minor acts of cruelty. In the right ones, it's a series of minor acts of cruelty that happen to be hilarious.
Mantzoukas is a longtime fan of the show and lobbied to be part of Series 19 -- by my count, the first to feature an American who didn't already live in Great Britain (Pete Volk has a wonderful interview with him here). He's joined by a cache of incredible talents who've yet to make a crossover impact in America; Fatiha El-Ghorri, Mathew Baynton, Rosie Ramsey and Stevie Martin. You may not have heard of these people, but they're about to take up valuable space inside your brain for this vital stretch between the end of NBA season and the beginning of NFL.
Each of these comedians is funny in their own right. But mashed together in the stage show that frames each episode, they play off each other in an electric blend of hilarious energy, simmering frustration and shame. The tasks that tie these segments together are the canvas on which masterpieces of embarrassment are painted. Contestants know when to make cutting remarks. They understand when to let their peers dangle against the backdrop of illustrious failure. Everyone, and I cannot express this loudly enough, is crushing it.
Each is content to be reduced to a pile of comedic rubble, reduced to the fact that trying to outsmart each task's illogical twist will often only make things more difficult. Everything gets the "yes, and" treatment to an effect exponentially higher than all the terrible improv we've suffered through at various undergraduate institutions in our lives.
Taskmaster is a beautiful distraction. It's perfect summer calories, capable of working as a snack or a meal. Want to just watch a few clips? You could make a wonderful supercut of El-Ghorri's deadpan threats to her hosts (generally punctuated with a well-placed "bruv.") alone. Want to dive into the middle of an episode in the middle of the season? Great news; the lack of serialized structure means you're not missing much. Want to pound half the series in one night? There's no joke fatigue at play, because this is a cast of comedians who boost each other to new heights faced with a series of absurd tasks with no thread tying them together but the embarrassment of those trapped inside.
I haven't laughed as hard at a television program since Arrested Development was fighting for oxygen on Fox. The producers of Taskmaster provided five comedians/actors a canvas of failure and stood back as they created a masterpiece. Everyone takes each task exactly as seriously as it demands, which is halfway between a gentle shrug and not at all. Each defeat is met with self deprecation or faux outrage, feeding that improv ethos until it becomes a funnel cloud.
Series 19 ends soon. A winner will be crowned and it will not matter. What will is the fact Taskmaster has united one of the greatest comedic ensembles in television history to fail spectacularly at things like transporting vinegar, eating yogurt or doing something "cool," then convincingly doing said "cool" thing backward. Watch it live. Watch it delayed on YouTube whenever it suits you. Just watch it, because it's the funniest television I've seen in years.