Photo: Taskmaster via YouTube
This list was originally published on March 27, 2024. For Taskmaster’s 20th-season premiere (airing simultaneously in the U.K. and U.S. for the first time), we tasked ourselves with adding five more tasks to the list.
Over the past few years, the British comedy game series Taskmaster has risen from very specific Anglophile favorite to what’s arguably the internet’s favorite casual watch, a weekly dose of delightfully bonkers mayhem that has all the warmth of The Great British Bake-Off mixed with the savage wit of Would I Lie to You? The show has proved so infectious among its fans that we’re often dying to get other people into it, sharing clips and doing our best to turn as many people as possible on to its zaniness.
If you’re a newbie, here’s how it works: Comedian Greg Davies is the Taskmaster, a sort of host and overlord of the entire show who must be pleased at all costs. Alex Horne, the show’s creator, serves as the “Taskmaster’s assistant” and guides five contestants (usually comedians but often also actors, musicians, and occasionally even pro athletes) through a series of “Tasks,” each concealed in an envelope at the beginning of the segment. These tasks range from the simple (eat as much watermelon as fast as you can) to the ludicrously complex (complete a series of tasks while constantly riding a bicycle as slowly as possible), the goal being to showcase contestants doing things that are equally wacky and strangely impressive. At the end of each task, Davies awards points based on performance and his own whims, and the winner at the end of each series gets a trophy shaped like Davies’s head.
Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds, and yes, it’s basically joy bottled and shared as a tonic against the unfairness of an inhospitable world. But where do you begin with a show like that? How do you know if you’ll like it? Fortunately for everyone, Taskmaster’s format lets you basically leap right in and watch any individual task you want, thereby getting a taste for the show and an idea of what to expect from full-length episodes. So in honor of the show’s 20th season, here are the 30 best tasks in Taskmaster history, all of which will make a wonderful introduction for newcomers.
The first proper task of any series is a tone setter, a chance to get to know the respective approaches of each new cast member, and the kickoff task of series 17 perfectly encapsulates that dynamic. It’s a deceptively simple request: Do the riskiest thing involving an egg without breaking said egg. So how do the new contestants respond? John Robins stages a dramatic short film, Steve Pemberton takes the egg on a carriage tour, Nick Mohammed throws bricks at the egg in an Icarus-like display, Joanne McNally packs hers in padding and plays tennis, and Sophie Willan … well, just watch all the way to the end. Everything adds up to one of the best openers the show has ever mustered.
The task is a simple guessing game. One team member gets to see an object in a box, then the other team members have to guess what that person saw, using only facial expressions (no nods or head shakes) as clues. The problem? The two men tasked with looking into the box, Jack Dee on one team and Andy Zaltzman on the other, have been given the secret task of lying every time they’re asked a question. If they don’t lie, everyone loses points, but of course their teammates don’t know that. Oh, and both Jack and Andy have to put their heads through portrait cutouts that make them look like naval officers. It’s a great task for a lot of reasons, but it’s especially worth it for the juxtaposition of the tireless exuberance of Rosie Jones — wearing a hot-dog costume to get bonus points, long story — and the resigned glower of Dee. “It’s Captain Jackie and the Hot Dog!” is an all-time great Taskmaster line.
If you’re looking for one of the most beautifully simple introductions to Taskmaster imaginable, this task from series nine is both a great starting point and one of the best small-scale moments from the series. It’s very simple: Contestants are given three aubergines (eggplants, Americans), and they have to hide them around the room in ten minutes, then see how long it takes Alex to find them. What happens next is pure wholesome madness. Jo Brand squashes one of hers, David Baddiel tries to eat his, while Rose Matafeo and Ed Gamble rip theirs to shreds and Katy Wix overestimates the naturalism of holding a hard hat under one arm for an extended period of time. It’s simple, it’s fun, and as a bonus, it’s one of those Taskmaster gems that you could replicate at home.
Earlier in series seven, contestants were told that at some point they’d hear a siren. When they heard it, they’d have to immediately run to the entryway of the Taskmaster House, put on coveralls and then lie down on the ground. So what better time for that siren to reappear than smack in the middle of a task in which everyone had to tie themselves up? One of the most diabolical moments ever devised by Horne and the Taskmaster writers, this one’s got it all, from James Acaster absolutely losing his mind to Rhod Gilbert taking it all out on Horne through a simple reinterpretation of the task instructions.
Every episode of Taskmaster opens with what’s called a “Prize Task,” in which contestants are asked to bring in an object that best matches a theme they were given in advance, anything from “The Best Burstable Thing” to “The Creepiest Thing.” These are, by design, a mixed bag, allowing Davies to marvel at contestants that brought in something genuinely cool or funny and mock contestants who brought something lackluster. They’re always fun, but they never got more memorable than the series-11 finale, when contestants were asked to present something that made them look tough. Answers ranged from a leather cap to a bat with a nail driven through it, but you might be wondering early on … Why does soft-spoken, suit-wearing Mike Wozniak have that big puffy hat on? Just wait for it and be rewarded.
Sometimes, for extra fun, the Taskmaster writers room gives a little side task to just one contestant. Usually the joke’s on that contestant, but this time it was on his teammates. The actual proper task involves teams of contestants joining their bodies together via hands on hips, then trying to get as much sand as possible into a shopping cart. Munya Chawawa and Sarah Millican get on fine as a team of two, but the team of three is thrown into chaos when John Kearnes is given secret instructions to sabotage his teammates, Fern Brady and Dara O’Briain. What follows is a treasure trove of insults (“Dafty in the middle”), confusion, and hat-shaped sand castles.
Taskmaster is often at its best when it’s so willfully silly that you can’t help but get swept up in the absurdity when someone turns out to be good at an absolutely ridiculous premise. Such was the case when the always wonderful Jo Brand stepped up and proved herself a telepath. This show-ending live task asked contestants to guess whether Greg Davies was presently looking at a picture of a horse or a picture of a laminator. They had a 50-50 shot with every guess, but even with those odds in mind, Brand seemed completely dialed in to the point of almost supernatural ability. Could she see a reflection? Was she just lucky? Is she really a psychic with the world’s driest sense of humor? Watch and decide for yourself.
Some team tasks involve sabotaging your own team for some bonus points, but this team task involves earning bonus points by, well … just being generally weird and hoping no one notices. The task itself is hard enough — move a watermelon from one place to the next without touching it or reentering the room where it’s meant to land — but then you throw in the bizarre secret instructions everyone got before the task started. Whether it’s saying the word umbrella, lying on the ground for 30 seconds, or gathering random objects, all five players are saddled with strange behavior while trying to complete a truly challenging task. Mayhem ensues in the best way, particularly when you start to count just how many ways Nick Mohammed and Steve Pemberton manage to mess it up.
Speaking of willfully silly, there’s this bit from series 13, in which contestants were given an empty cement mixer and asked to dream up other uses for it. Judi Love decided it was a cocktail mixer, while Ardal O’Hanlon made it the centerpiece of a new salon and Sophie Duker used it like a lottery numbers roller to generate “ice breaker” prompts to better her relationship with Horne. Bridget Christie, one of the most eccentric players in the history of the game, used her cement-mixer moment to make a strange art film about climate change, but the real showstopper here is what Chris Ramsey did. It involves sausage and … look, I’m just gonna level with y’all. This moment produced one of the top-three hardest laughs I’ve ever heard out of my wife, and it was glorious, so just watch it. It’ll make you laugh, too.
Throughout Taskmaster, contestants have been given time, a camera, and a prompt and asked to simply go off and create something, often with tremendous results. This series-one task is the first great result from that subset of the show, as the first-ever lineup of five contestants were asked to do something that would look cool in reverse. Josh Widdicombe was arguably the cleverest, making it look like he was pulling a car by rolling across the driveway lying on a skateboard, but he’s not the task-stealer. That honor goes to Romesh Ranganathan, who “created” balloons by popping them in reverse and then added a song called “Tree Wizard,” which will stick in your head for hours, if not days.
The contestants get an actual water cooler and are asked to create a “water-cooler moment” that people will talk about while using it as a prop. Bob Mortimer (a candidate for Best Taskmaster Player ever, truly) rolls out his classic party trick of ripping an apple in half, Nish Kumar revels in his own place as one of the show’s more gleefully inept players by trying a drop kick, and Sally Phillips … Well, Sally decided she would go the TV-soap route and filmed one of the best examples of commitment to the bit in Taskmaster history. It was so convincing that it got Greg to be horny on main, so you know you want to watch that.
Another early task that simply asks contestants to film something creatively, “Create a music video for a nursery rhyme” delivers a cornucopia of pure weirdness. You’ve got Richard Osman wrecking shop during a “Bittersweet Symphony” homage, Katherine Ryan devising her own nursery rhyme about tooth decay, and Joe Wilkinson delivering the most low-energy version of “Old MacDonald” you’ve ever heard. Competing for the title of standout moment: Jon Richardson’s delightfully haunting version of “Three Blind Mice” and Doc Brown rapping about fish while punching a salmon in the face. You be the judge.
In the annals of Taskmaster history, no team has ever won more hearts than “Javie Martzoukas,” the combination of Jason Mantzoukas (instantly a Taskmaster Hall of Famer) and Stevie Martin. There are many reasons for that, but for many fans it almost certainly started here. The task is a first-of-its-kind hybrid in which teams must guess whether the other team is lying live in the studio while viewing pretaped footage — that’s fun enough. But what really makes it shine is what happens when Jason and Stevie begin to confer on the floor of the set like they’re at a slumber party, all building to a punch line that may be the funniest thing in the whole of series 19.
We’re almost a decade and more than 15 seasons into Taskmaster now, which means every contestant knows they’re in for something wild and oddly frustrating when they sign up. Still, that doesn’t stop Horne and his writers from coming up with surprises. Take this deceptively simple task from early in series 16, in which contestants were simply asked to build the highest tower of cans in the blank room of the Taskmaster House generally referred to as “the lab.” The catch? They’d be blindfolded the entire time. The other catch? The blindfold meant none of them could see the colossal tower of cans already in the room, just a foot tap away from crumbling to the ground. Bad news for the contestants, but good news for us, because we get to hear Bake Off alum Sue Perkins use the phrase “absolute shower of shit.”
Series-13 contestants were each ushered into a room full of shoes of all kinds and told to find the shoe Horne was thinking of. As Judi Love says, it’s basically Guess Who? with shoes (“Shoe Who?”) with the most points going to the person who can find the right answer with the least questions. For extra fun, each contestant is also given a special phrase or sound they have to make after each question. If you want to watch five people spiral into five completely different types of madness, from Sophie Duker looking like she wants to murder Horne to Horne briefly looking like he wants to murder Bridget Christie, look no further than this clip. Even Davies is impressed by the sheer levels of exasperation on display.
Another task that’s all about the contestants using a blank canvas to craft an image, this one’s simple: Hide yourself in a photo so that the Taskmaster can’t see you. Mel Giedroyc unfortunately misunderstands the instructions, leading to one of the show’s greatest task fails, but everyone else brings their A-game for this one, coming up with brilliant disguises all culminating in Noel Fielding perfectly utilizing the bright-yellow jumpsuit he chose to be his Taskmaster costume. It’s called “practical fashion,” look it up.
Another one of those wonderful tasks that exemplifies the joys of Taskmaster, this early series-11 gem gives us not just a great task idea but a wonderful summation of how everyone in this particularly good series looks at the world. Each of the contestants has the straightforward task of delivering plates to Alex while using either a bicycle, a scooter, or a hoverboard, and each of them reacts in a different way. Charlotte Ritchie’s just happy to be out riding around, Lee Mack analyzes the rules to his advantage, and Mike Wozniak assumes a competition style that we can only describe as meticulously awkward. The best moment, though, might be Sarah Kendall’s completely nonchalant delivery of the line “I mean, life’s for living, right?”
An in-person creativity task rather than something the contestants got to film and show later, this series-three classic starts very simply: Horne goes into the shed on the Taskmaster House grounds and chills for an hour. When he comes out, each contestant has to present him with something surprising. What happens next ranges from creepy (Sara Pascoe and Paul Chowdhry) to cheeky (Al Murray and Dave Gorman) to downright deranged (Rob Beckett). If nothing else sticks with you from the entirety of this series, Rob Beckett laughing maniacally while wielding a power sprayer will.
One of the foundational moments of Taskmaster arrived at the very beginning of series one, when contestants were asked to eat as much watermelon as possible in one minute. While that’s undeniably a classic task, in series ten the show topped it by breaking contestants into teams, giving them four minutes instead of one, and adding an important caveat: You may not feed yourself. What happens next is both hilarious and undeniably someone’s kink. Daisy May Cooper’s gluttonous commitment alone puts this one in the Taskmaster Hall of Fame.
There’s a proud editing tradition on Taskmaster that fans of the show know all too well, and one of its first major rollouts comes at the tail end of this classic task. It’s another really simple one: There’s a golf hole in the middle of a red putting green, and contestants have to knock a potato into that hole without stepping on the red carpet that represents the green. There are, of course, a number of ways to do this, one of which is to simply step right up and toss the potato into the hole. Joe Wilkinson, one of the show’s most iconic players, opts for that plan and pays for it in the studio later.
There’s a small barge in a canal with a pole mounted on the front. There are also five flotation devices painted like watermelons strung up along the same canal. The task, therefore, is quite straightforward: Drive the barge forward and impale all five floatie rings on the pole. The fun of it, of course, is that these are comedians and actors who’d otherwise never get to drive a barge through a canal, and the glee with which they undertake this task is absolutely infectious, from Mae Martin’s relentless focus to Jenny Eclair’s boundless enthusiasm. Plus you get Kiell Smith-Bynoe offering up one of the most infectious improvised tunes in the Taskmaster catalogue. You’ll be singing “For Me” to yourself for days.
Jason Mantzoukas told anyone who would listen, including the studio audience, that his Taskmaster motto was “Destroy, Dismantle, Engulf in Flames,” and he truly lived up to it every chance he got. But for all his chaos-agent energy, Mantzoukas, an avowed Taskmaster fan who volunteered for the show, was also a very clever player of the game when he wanted to be. For proof, just look at this task, in which each player has the goal of surprising Greg Davies with the placement of … something. Everyone has fun with this one, but Mantzoukas’s solution, featuring a cameo from a former Taskmaster player, is both brilliant and oddly unsettling, just like everything else he did in series 19.
There’s a bar cart loaded with cocktail ingredients in the lab. All five of series ten’s wonderful contestants have a simple job: Make Alex a cocktail, but do it without ever making a noise louder than 60 decibels. Do that, and you have to shout a key phrase, dump your cocktail out, and start over. Taskmaster is great for watching otherwise sane, lovely people collapse into beings who’ve lost all reason and sense of purpose, and that’s exactly what happens to several contestants this time, particularly Daisy May Cooper, who has to shout the phrase “I love this!” with the increasing top-blowing cartoonishness of George Costanza.
An enduring subgenre of Taskmaster task involves the contestants making some sort of food, then presenting it to Alex Horne, who must eat or drink it without complaint and then report his findings to Greg Davies. It’s with this format in mind that the series-four contestants set out to make the “most exotic” sandwich possible, only to learn at the end of their sandwich-making adventure that they have to eat whatever they’ve just made. Mel Giedroyc, cheerful player that she is, dives headlong into her sandwich, which is basically a cartoonish tower of chocolate candy, creating one of the best food moments in Taskmaster history. Then there’s Noel Fielding, who does … well, a typically Noel Fielding thing that you’ll have to see for yourself.
“I don’t want to mess this up, because it’s a dream come true,” Jessica Knappett says at the start of this task, echoing the feelings of quite a lot of Taskmaster viewers when this joyful thing came around. There are a few select moments in the show when everyone, no matter how they’re faring in the game otherwise, just gets to have fun, and when tasked with re-creating a video game with help from the show’s crew, all five of series seven’s contestants rose to the occasion. From Knappett’s gleeful Mario Kart riff to James Acaster’s note-perfect Grand Theft Auto character movements, it’s just plain fun from start to finish.
Taskmaster rarely gets more ambitious in terms of sheer scope than this favorite from series eight, in which an entire rail yard becomes the show’s playground. The specifics of the task are simple: Alex Horne is on a bridge overlooking the rail yard, while the contestants are stationed a good distance away when the task begins. When time starts, Alex will duck down and pop back up again in ten-second increments, trying to spot each contestant as they creep toward him. Last one to get noticed wins. The result is five runs packed with humor (Lou Sanders offers a Taskmaster all-timer with the line “Will he notice me if I’m a bin?”) and genuine suspense, as some contestants get closer than you probably thought possible at the start of the task.
This whole list is subjective, of course, but there are certain Taskmaster moments that just about any fan of the show will instantly recall when asked about the most memorable things that have ever happened on the show, and one of them comes at the very end of this task. Each contestant is simply told to come up with the best possible declaration of love for Davies. They can interpret that however they wish, and they come up with some truly wild stuff, including Tim Vine dressing up as Davies’s mother and Russell Howard deciding that his kindness will simply be to avoid sleeping with Davies’s mother. Then, at last, the action moves to the diabolical Liza Tarbuck, who does something involving Horne, a chair, and a cake. Strap in.
The first Taskmaster series is a fascinating artifact for longtime fans, particularly given how popular and viral the show has gotten in the nine years since it aired. It’s clear that Horne and Davies aren’t quite sure if their silly little show is going to work, the contestants are all still figuring things out, and the show is in need of a few standout moments to keep the energy up. Fortunately for everyone, one such moment arrives midway through the series, when contestants are simply told to spend 20 pounds on the “best gift” for Davies. They get a few weeks to pull this one off, then have to show off their gift in the studio. That’s when Josh Widdicombe takes off his shoe and his sock and reveals a tattoo, cementing himself as one of the most committed players in the history of the game and giving Taskmaster fans an all-time great moment of sheer delight from Davies.
Final tasks on each episode are always live, which can deliver mixed results when the action fizzles too quickly or the contestants don’t quite take to the task. Then, you get moments like this, in which all five contestants attempt to make indecipherable noises while Davies listens with his back turned. Everyone is completely invested in finding the best ways to deceive him, and by the end, everyone’s laughing to the point of tears. It’s another task you can play at home, the best live task the show has ever devised, and an instant mood-brightener all in one.
Every Taskmaster superfan has their favorite contestants, their favorite tasks, their favorite individual moments within the show’s ever-growing history. Look at the wider internet, though, and one moment reigns above all others as the most notorious and hilarious in the show’s history. It involves a woman named Rosalind, two teams of contestants, and a task that asks those teams to write a song about a woman they’ve never met with only a brief interview to use as inspiration. Nish Kumar and Mark Watson deliver a surprisingly catchy little ditty, but the real crowning moment comes when Bob Mortimer, Aisling Bea, and Sally Phillips take the stage. The moment they whisper-sing “Rosalind’s a nightmare,” you know you’re in for an all-time great bit, and to this day that bit remains the peak of Taskmaster’s silly, tear-jerking, unforgettable powers.
