Taskmaster, the British comedy panel show hosted by Greg Davies and Alex Horne, has just wrapped up its 21st season over the course of 11 years. It’s a staggering amount, with over 200 episodes so far, but impressively, the show practically hasn’t changed whatsoever. It’s fairly obvious there’s a bigger budget now, both in terms of attracting higher-profile guests and creating more extravagant tasks for contestants to compete in, but the format was nailed from the get-go.
In a remote interview with the pair, Polygon asked what has changed behind the scenes that viewers perhaps won’t see. Horne explained that they’ve simply “worked out how to do it over the years.”
“I used to go to Greg’s flat,” Horne continued. “We used to think about it very carefully, about what we’re going to say, we’d worry about it. Whereas now, we take it as seriously, but we trust our instincts much more. I think we know how to be funny and how to have fun with it.”
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Davies chipped in by explaining that their “roles have become organically defined, rather than in those first few seasons — sorry, series — when we sat down and decided what the dynamics should be and how we should respond. They were almost ‘eggy’ in comparison to where we are now, which is that we both know the limits of our roles and what the dynamic is. It feels a lot more fun now, to be honest, because we know the [Taskmaster] world and the limitations to the world.”
During Davies’ opening monologue in a season 21 episode, he makes a gag about them running out of ideas for jokes and tasks on the show. In our interview, however, he was quick to explain that was definitely just a bit for the intro:
“Me saying something like that is just me finding something else to say,” he clarified. “I don’t think it’s indicative, I don’t feel stale, I don’t feel bored of it, that’s just a thing to say. The show is as fresh as it ever was. I’ve said it many times but how Alex consistently generates ideas that are different and surprising is something for medical science, I think. We probably should get his brain removed at some point.”
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Laughing off the suggestion that his psyche needs to be tested upon, Horne followed up Davies’ clarification by explaining that the show was so outlandish from the start, it set the bar early:
“You know in sitcoms, you jump the shark, that phrase. I think we can’t really do that in this show because very early on we had tasks like ‘do the biggest splat,’ so I think we jumped the shark in episode one. We can do whatever we want now. It’s just really fun.”
For those outside of the United Kingdom, you can watch the entirety of Taskmaster‘s season 21 on the official YouTube channel. Residents of the U.K. can watch it via Channel 4.
