Show Discussion: Taskmaster Series 8

By | May 7, 2019

Wednesdays, 9pm,
Dave and UKTV Play

It’s back! Five more comics put their wits and skills to the test in trying to complete ridiculous tasks under the watchful gaze of Greg Davies and Alex Horne.

Battling it out this series:

  • Lou Sanders
  • Iain Sterling
  • Sian Gibson
  • Paul Sinha
  • Joe Thomas

We don’t know if UKTV are going to be doing their usual thing of putting up episodes a week in advance (except the final) which is just annoying anyway. Still, though.

Edit: It sounds like Dave won’t be putting episodes up a week early this series, which I like because it doesn’t split the audience. Also there’s a new official website: taskmaster.tv.

44 thoughts on “Show Discussion: Taskmaster Series 8

  1. Brig Bother Post author

    Fun, apparently Richard Ayoade and Dawn French are up for it but have had to turn it down because of prior commitments (but hope to do it in future) and Kathy Burke has been approached and says she loves the show but doesn’t want to go on it.

    Reply
    1. Steve Williams

      That’s like Armando Iannucci who when he worked as a radio producer always turned down the job of producing I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, because he loved the show so much he didn’t want to know how it worked, he just wanted to enjoy listening to it.

      Reply
  2. Brandon

    I don’t think they’re putting the episodes on catch up before they’ve been shown this time, they didn’t last year IIRC.

    Reply
    1. steve

      They 100% did last year as i remember watching them there

      Reply
  3. Nico W.

    The second Danish season is airing right now and it is very successful. It doesn’t do huge numbers, but nothing really is right now so the show is always around second place of the week for its channel and in the top 10 in general. No idea who is on it as I currently can’t watch Danish TV, but if it is of interest, I will let you know.

    Reply
      1. Matt Clemson

        You can do some funky business to extract subtitles from a google drive stream. If you can get to a download link for the video, you can then change:

        &export=download

        to

        &export=timedtext&ttlang=en

        …and that should extract the english subtitles.

        Just in case for some reason streaming is troublesome for you, that’s a workaround!

        Reply
  4. Brig Bother Post author

    I’m not actually going to be able to watch this until Saturday, so I look forward to reading your comments in due course.

    Reply
  5. Mika

    Now that it’s filming, is it time for another “Poorly interpreted translation of news” post?
    https://www.fan-fortboyard.fr/blog/saison-2019/

    Various points of interest:
    – There’s a trapeze hanging below Saut de l’ange
    – Egout and Excalibur (!) might be gone
    – Cotons-tige is back. And now on the Velo beam above the Fort
    – Not that it’s been used in the French version for years, but the climbing wall is gone now
    – Theatre is gone, but might just be yet another retheming
    – There was one shot of a lot of the ‘beam’ games hung over the edge of the Fort as a promotional shot, BUT then there was another shot of a couple of them outside the fort, but with the safety lines, so could be Velo and Chaise Instable played over the water…?

    Reply
    1. Alex

      Egout and Excalibur are both gone, I read.

      Excalibur’s cell is gonna become the site for the newest character, the Fakir (played by Magloire, the guy who went on in 2017 and was hilariously scared of everything). Allegedly he’s going to have a flying carpet and appear out of a lamp. Not sure how that’s gonna work but OK.

      The game itself is going to be I think in the Boyard Academy mould, with the player having to do an old-chestnut magic staple. Walking on broken glass, bed of nails, that sort of thing.

      Reply
      1. Lee

        First day of filming actually got postponed due to Storm Yunkon. Apparently today’s filming will go onto 4-5am in the morning.

        Actually hope Excalibur is still on the fort in some form somewhere. Apparently the briefing of the show no longer takes place on the fort so that could free up that cell. (Although it could be back to sleeping quarters)

        Reply
    1. Des Elmes

      Des Chiffres et Des Lettres won’t be axed though, will it?

      As Weaver said when doing the World Cup Countdown last July, there would be a revolution if France Télévisions tried to take it off the air. It’s less than three years away from its anniversaire d’or, too.

      Reply
      1. Tom H

        At a guess, they’d probably prefer to get rid of French Pointless – which has never really taken off.

        Reply
  6. dan

    Dave has confirmed they will not be putting the eps up in advance at all this series.

    Reply
  7. Jonathan

    There’s a new official Taskmaster website, per-episode listings, tasks, and a place for info about doing it in schools/groups etc. It also mentions a Board Game is coming…

    https://taskmaster.tv/

    “Sure, the book is a handy way to carry out tasks and compete with and against others, but it isn’t a boardgame, is it?

    No!

    But that’s coming soon too!

    Yes, I’ve helped craft and design the official Taskmaster boardgame that means you can play the game and take part in the show in an organised but ridiculous way. You’ll get a tiny Taskmaster trophy, a beautiful plan of the house and loads of bespoke tasks, as well as video links to special group tasks from me, the Taskmaster’s Assistant (Alex Horne).”

    Reply
  8. Tom H

    More news from France, where M6 has dropped All Together Now after a massive *two* episodes – the second of which barely managed 1 million viewers.

    Odd scheduling on Tuesday nights perhaps to blame. Rest of the episodes in the can being burned off in a summer slot on W9.

    Reply
    1. David B

      I don’t know what’s happening with the formats market at the moment. Even the best formats seem to have a poor hit rate when they travel. Why should this be? Are broadcasters not really understanding the DNA of what they have and just using foreign formats to plug whatever hole they have in the schedules, whether it suits their territory/timeslot or not?

      The days of a format travelling to 100+ countries seems to be well over. A ‘hit’ is more like 10+ these days.

      Reply
  9. Alex McMillan

    Not willing to make a verdict based on one episode, but it feels like there is one member of this cast who really doesn’t gel.

    Reply
  10. Chris M. Dickson

    Dave did spoil the first two contestants shown on the most spectacular outdoor task, and I watched this spoiler. This was a poor move, as the rest of the episode was a little flat in comparison. Certainly it had a few good laughs, but perhaps it didn’t match up to what I was hoping for from it, on a prejudice that the first and last episodes of the series tend to be the best. Compare this episode to, say, the first episode of series two with Joe Wilkinson on the oche; I think it’s fair for there to be some element of getting to know the players, but this hasn’t caught alight straight away. (Maybe it’s just out of fear that Paul Sinha, for whom I am all in, might turn out to be another Dave Gorman…)

    Reply
    1. Chris M. Dickson

      The scooter task was fantastic, backing up my prejudice that the Taskmaster team deliberately put some of the best tasks in the first and last episodes of each series. I’d say that this series was not in the top half of the eight, but it was still easily good enough. It’s always slightly disappointing when someone takes part who I’m really looking forward to watching and Taskmaster turns out not to be quite their thing, but the number of times I have been very pleasantly surprised by someone I didn’t really know at all easily makes up for it.

      A question that I had and someone else also asked on the Taskmaster subreddit without immediate answer: in this series’ opening credits, there’s a clip of Paul Sinha in a bath with plenty of foam and a giant duck, then there’s a gunshot in the background; from which task did that come?

      Reply
  11. Tom H

    Anybody else seen Bradley Walsh’s Guestlist on ITV this evening? Has seemingly slipped under the radar – probably because the title gives no indication it’s a (pretty terrible) game show borrowing any ITV name who was available, the Generation Game’s conveyor belts and end of the pier humour.

    Reply
    1. Brig Bother Post author

      I was completely expecting it to be some sort of chatshow, so I will watch it tomorrow. Thanks for the heads up.

      Reply
  12. Brig Bother Post author

    Just quoting me on Twitter re: Taskmaster 8, having caught up with it this afternoon:

    “Oh I liked Taskmaster by the way. Stirling and Sanders are going to provide energy, Sian’s lovely, Paul’s lack of common sense is going to be hilarious. Joe Thomas seems a bit disinterested, but his attempt at the railyard task was genuinely heroic, so.”

    Reply
    1. Scott

      Not sure if Joe’s disinterested or just constantly on his guard waiting for Greg to take the piss.

      Reply
  13. John R

    Who Dares Wins tonight the first list is ‘Quiz Shows and Game Shows’ as per the A-Z list on UKGameshows!

    On a side note it is a relief that Alan Dedicoat is back with his recaps at the start of the episode, I thought they may have dropped him based on the episode last week!

    Reply
    1. David B

      This was a new (2019) episode, but I’m *fairly* sure UKGS was the source of a list two or three series ago. Though I can’t think what the different category would be if it was.

      Reply
      1. John R

        I think last time they did it may have been based on the Top 100 list

        It allowed the joke of ‘You could have said…Who Dares Wins!’ of course, they always seem to shove in at least one list per series which has that or Nick Knowles as a valid answer!

        Reply
        1. Chris M. Dickson

          A true UKGS fan would’ve gone “Think Tank (1), Think Tank (2), Think Tank (3) and Accumulate!” but, hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

          Did anyone at UKGS Towers (situated between Terror Towers and the Pointless Tower) get word that they were about to be used?

          Reply
          1. Brandon

            I think it was odd that the Robert Robinson and Dick and Dom versions of Ask the Family came up as separate answers when they were looking through the ones that had been missed.

        2. Des Elmes

          Hmm, reminds me of this:

          Max Bygraves: “Name a television quiz game.”
          Contestant: “Family Fortunes.”
          Max: “You know where your bread is buttered.”

          Reply
  14. Chris M. Dickson

    I am no longer concerned about the titular series 8; episode 2 was very good, and all the competitors have justified their places. Hurrah!

    Reply
  15. TVs Michael Harmstone

    By my calculations, Lou is a full ten points clear at the top now. She’s not actually lost an episode yet – she tied with Iain in Week 1 (but he won on tiebreaker) then won the last two outright.

    Reply
    1. Matt Clemson

      Of course it’s still early days, but maybe that jumpsuit was a rather better investment than it may at first have seemed!

      Reply
  16. Danny Kerner

    Lou Sanders is becoming the strong contender for the series win. She has been at the top every week. Yeah two times it was on a tiebreaking scenario but she has technically been the winner every week.

    Reply
    1. David B

      The panelists are starting to get into it nicely. Still some very creative tasks in this series, though perhaps fewer where a really clever lateral solution has been built into it.

      Reply
      1. Brig Bother Post author

        Just caught up with ep 4, yes this is turning into a pretty great series. Everyone’s bringing something to the table, and everyone seems to be engaging in it.

        Reply
  17. Matt Clemson

    In last night’s episode, Lou Sanders referred to the task envelope as the ‘clue’. I had previously wondered if it was possible that her getup was just a coincidence, but now I’m quite certain she’s absolutely leaning into the Anneka Rice Treasure Hunt jumpsuit thing.

    She was already a favourite, but that’s cemented it.

    Reply

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