The Big Picture
Taskmaster
thrives on unscripted chaos, with comedians taking ridiculous tasks seriously for a shot at glory.
Creator Alex Horne and host Greg Davies appreciate the show’s international appeal and the joy it brings to fans worldwide.
Both hosts, drawing from years of stand-up experience, continue to thrive in comedy outside of
Taskmaster
, with separate UK tours.
If there’s any question whether Greg Davies and Alex Horne are as funny as they seem on Taskmaster, let the record show that I didn’t stop laughing the entire time I spoke with them.
It’s unsurprising, really, for a duo who’s been working together for nearly ten years, and who’ve worked on the stand-up circuit even longer. Even if I weren’t already a fan of the both of them — see: the episode of The Horne Section Podcast I’m catching up on as I write this — they’re effortlessly charming, a fact that probably aids in hosting a show where grown adults make absolute fools of themselves.
For the uninitiated, Taskmaster is a panel show, one of many in the UK, which features a group of five comedians competing to win the season overall. The format? Completing bizarre and increasingly involved tasks set out by Horne, who devised the show as an Edinburgh Fringe Festival skit all the way back in 2010. From attempting to catch pool floaties on a barge pole to getting a giant rubber duck into a lake, each group — which has included names like Aisling Bea, Noel Fielding, and Sally Phillips — attempts to impress the Taskmaster (Davies), who scores their attempts out of five, which is exactly as chaotic as it sounds.
Taskmaster
Five comedians are set tasks challenging their creativity and wit. The tasks are supervised by Alex Horne but the Taskmaster, Greg Davies, always has the final word.
Release Date April 26, 2018
Creator
Cast Greg Davies , Alex Horne , Kerry Godliman , Ed Gamble , Sarah Kendall , Sophie Duker , Richard Herring , Lou Sanders
Seasons 17
But Davies isn’t nearly as stern and dictator-like (his words, not mine) in person as he is in the show. That’s a persona he developed specifically for the camera, one that draws from years of being a schoolteacher, a fact that’s featured in his stand-up for years. “I think I’ve been working on a sort of emotionless, cruel dictator character for many decades,” he jokes, “And I think this is just…I finally found the place where I can let that guy run riot.”
Over Zoom, he and Horne are as pleasant as ever, even when they realized I’d printed miniature versions of their faces and stuck them to a couple of porcelain busts in the background of my video, just for a laugh. (“Do you see Alex and I as porcelain ladies?” Davies asks me, a statement I can now add to my personal list of “things I never expected to hear during an interview.”) They’re happy to answer all of my increasingly ridiculous questions about the show, whose seventeenth season premieres this week on YouTube in the US.
‘Taskmaster’ Thrives on Unscripted Chaos
“There’s not really a lot of planning,” Horne remarks of the show’s tasks, which I described to him as a kind of psychological warfare for the contestants, whom he constantly watches over while they work. “It’s a lot of instinct really. I know comedians really well, and I know what will get them going, and they’re so competitive. So I think it’s just coming up with scenarios where they will do things in different ways. I think you’re giving me far too much credit that I might have studied some warfare, but I appreciate that.”
The show exists in its own kind of universe, something both hosts have described as being completely different from the rules of the real world. Gone are the norms of social graces, replaced by a burning desire to do the most inane tasks well, even if it means embarrassing themselves in the process.
“The fact that everyone takes the show so seriously once they’re in it is what plays into [the fun of it],” Davies says. “Alex is very good at picking out things that are inherently preposterous, but because we’ve defined the rules of the show, they will take it seriously. And that’s the joy of the show for me, is to see grown adults wanting to steer [a] barge well and then looking for credit for it.”
It’s a bit like becoming children again, as the Taskmaster house (a small bungalow out in Chiswick) becomes a kind of realm of pretend where anything goes — with the added benefit of being allowed to swear while doing so. The contestants even rope Horne into their attempts, dressing him up or using him as a prop, and he remains entirely unfazed, even nearly fifteen years into the game.
“Some of the comics, they said it felt like they’ve gone to my special school,” he says. “They don’t have to clear up after themselves and they get told what to do. They quite like getting orders. They quite like getting instructions. They’d say, “Okay, well, I have to do it.”
“And I think we all suppress the inner child past a certain age,” Davies agrees, “And they can’t get away with suppressing it anymore. They can’t pretend that they’re grownups.”
Horne & Davies Appreciate the Show’s International Appeal
Image via Channel 4
The duo, who took New York by storm to premiere the seventeenth season of the panel show — which is available to stream for free on YouTube — are well aware of the show’s influence outside of the UK, where it’s hopped from the country’s Dave network to Channel 4 in the nearly ten years since it began airing. Taskmaster has become beloved the world over, spawning numerous spinoff series and worming its way into the hearts of viewers, who delight in the rapport the two share, both with each other and with the rolling roster of contestants.
While the choice to make the show available for free for international viewers was not one either of the hosts made themselves, they appreciate what it’s done for the series, and how much it means for fans outside the UK to express their love for it. Horne notes that the decision was “probably because of lockdown,” but that it “almost seemed too good to be true” that it could reach as many people as it has — and that it’s “pretty weird” to have become a TV institution on the back of a project that began with him getting friends to transfer money into his bank account: “We might look like we work hard, but really, it’s mainly pissing about.”
“It’s so gleeful that you can go to an actual different country and people can say, “I’ve watched you do that silly thing,” Davies says. “I think it’s wonderful. I can’t speak for Alex, but there’s always a hint of guilt about the narcissistic nature of comedy. And when there’s a happy byproduct to that, I think it’s lovely. I love that people are made happy even for a while.”
And for as much as audiences delight in watching grown-up comedians do ridiculous things for fame and glory (and a trophy shaped like Davies’ head), it’s just as much fun for the two of them. When asked, per my mother’s request, where they get the silly socks they wear with their stoic black suits on the program, Davies ruminated on just how peculiar it is that some people’s Real Adult Job involves him handing out points for inane accomplishments:
“That’s the thing about this show. There are people who… it’s their actual serious job to make this up, and they’re great at it….People have to do a serious job within our silly universe. Patrick knows that I will always forget in between recordings to change my silly socks. So part of Patrick’s actual work routine is to come to my dressing room and say, “Have you changed into your new pair of socks?”
The ‘Taskmaster’ Hosts Haven’t Left Stand-Up Behind
Image via Channel 4
That’s not to discredit the work that both Horne and Davies put into the show, drawing from years of experience working the comedy circuit, and often making friends with the comedians who compete for Davies’ approval. Both are embarking on their own separate tours across the UK — Horne, this summer with his comedy band The Horne Section, and Davies in 2025, with his first stand-up tour in seven years, Full Fat Legend.
The Horne Section, which has been performing just as long as Horne himself has been involved with Taskmaster, has already played a few dates in places like Cambridge and Milton Keynes, and Horne is “massively relieved” to have started: “I do love it, but I also get a bit apprehensive that this might be the one that goes badly. But mine’s with five people, so it’s me and a band. So it’s a different beast, I suppose, isn’t it?” (He also admits that he’s “quite shy” in real life, which I’d have a hard time believing, if I weren’t the same kind of shy person who flourishes when ribbing people.)
Davies, on the other hand, thrives in the kind of “instant gratification” he gets from doing his solo shows — something that would be obvious to anyone who’s watched You Magnificent Beast or Firing Cheeseballs at a Dog. It’s a different animal from television, where comics have full control over what happens onstage: “We suppress smashing cakes into our face, and I just think for me, it’s like, great, I can go and do a thing, and then people can tell me whether they like it or not straight away. I love the energy of that…I never understand when I hear standups bemoaning doing a tour. I just love it.”
It seems like a bit of a perfect combination, the shy and the bombastic coming together as co-hosts. (Even if Davies does refer to the six-foot-two creator as “Little Alex Horne.”) And if you don’t believe me, you can check it out soon, as a new group of contestants join the fray, including Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed and Steve Pemberton of Inside No. 9 fame, along with Joanne McNally, John Robins, and Sophie Willan. With Channel 4 backing them for at least five more seasons (two of which have already been at least partially shot), it’s just the beginning of the future for Taskmaster, and the starting point for even more chaos.
Taskmaster premieres new episodes on its YouTube channel on Fridays.