I found it hard to understand all the fuss about Taskmaster when just catching the odd clip on social media or dipping in sporadically - but tuning in regularly to follow the fortunes of Richard Herring in Series 10 totally won me over and I've been hooked ever since.
This Guardian interview with the show's creator Alex Horne - published in advance of Taskmaster's New Year Treat and Series 15 - identifies some of the key reasons for its success: the way you get to see how the comedian contestants' minds work when they're put in pressurised, absurd situations, revealing "something profound about the individual's character or temperament, a trait that they might, in other circumstances, attempt to conceal"; tasks that are "offbeat but not wacky; off-kilter but not bonkers", that have "subjective solutions" and that invite and reward ingenuity and creativity (and occasionally cheating); the on-screen relationship between the capricious Taskmaster himself, Greg Davies, and Horne, "the deferential butler-worm, who appears to take quasi-sexual pleasure in Davies' big-handed bullying".
The article's author Simon Parkin also traces the show's origins and development into a cult favourite, and astutely points out how its influence can now be seen elsewhere in terms of format and the gradual emergence of an "authentic, intimate humour" far removed from traditional satire, cringe comedy and the bearpit of the conventional panel show. There's a charming silliness to it all that makes it ideal comfort TV for our current trying times.
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