Note: For legal reasons, there are NO clips/videos of the show in this post. In addition, there are zero spoilers of what happened specifically during the show.
I attended the first ever taping of Taskmaster here in the United States, and it was absolutely hilarious. It was filmed at CBS Headquarters in Hollywood, and the stage set up and ambience was incredible. It featured Lisa Lampanelli, Freddie Highmore, Ron Funches, Dillon Francis, and Kate Berlant as the main comedians, so the talent is top notch.
Now in case you’ve never heard of it, Taskmaster is a show that’s extremely popular in both the UK and Europe. As a result of its success, they wanted to see if they could replicate those results in the United States.
The idea of Taskmaster is simple yet effective: Take 5 extremely funny people and pin them against each other where they each try to accomplish certain “tasks.” Each task is ridiculous and unique in nature, forcing each contestant to be creative in their approach.
For every episode, one of the 5 comedians puts on the line a very valuable item of theirs, and the winner of that episode gets to keep that precision item. At the end of the entire series, one person will be crowned the Taskmaster, effectively being the overall winner.
Being honest, I was absolutely dying when I was in the audience. The tasks that they gave were very clever, making it entertaining to see both the creativity and humor behind each persons attempt to accomplish that task. Especially because I’m a DJ & Music Producer, it was funny to see Dillon Francis (who’s a DJ as well) not as a musician but as a comedian (and he’s extremely funny).
The banter and general talk among all the comedians/contestants made the show even better, as they got to witness how each other accomplished the same tasks. The general flow of the show is very interesting yet comical, as there were some really original approaches to some of the tasks, as well as some of the comedians just having fun with it. They took it seriously, but not too seriously.
Overall I had a blast watching the first episode, and when it eventually airs on TV, I can’t suggest enough to watch it. They were hoping the US version would perform as well as the UK version, and after being there for the first taping, they’re off to a really good start.
