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Comedy Central making US version of UK show "Taskmaster"

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T

Tregard

Soothsayer
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This is wonderful news

Taskmaster – Produced by Avalon Television, Taskmaster is based on the BAFTA and Royal Television Society award-nominated, internationally popular UK format. Reggie Watts will star as the Taskmaster who, with series creator Alex Horne as his loyal assistant, will judge five unwitting comedians as they compete against each other with creativity, cunning and genius in a series of stupefying tasks. Executive produced by Watts, Horne, Richard Allen-Turner, Rob Aslett, David Martin, James Taylor, Jon Thoday, Kara Baker and Andy Devonshire, who will also direct.
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For those of you that haven't seen Taskmaster, you're in for a real treat. Tasks range from "get three yoga balls onto a yoga mat on a hill" to "impress this mayor". It's a hysterical show, one of the best things to come out of UK television in a long time.

Spookily enough, me and my girlfriend actually made some predictions yesterday on who would be cast in a hypothetical US version of Taskmaster. We concluded with: Chelsea Peretti, Adam Conover, Demetri Martin, Carrie Brownstein and Aziz Ansari. Casting for the actual series is still not known (Except that Reggie Watts will be the Taskmaster in place of Greg Davies).

Other tasks:
Conceal this Pineapple on your person
Throw a teabag into a mug from the furthest distance
Throw a potato into a golf hole without touching the red green
Get all the shopping into a trolley across the river, fastest wins
Get to a microwave in the smallest number of steps
 
S

Semajer

Member
Taskmaster is the finest programme on TV. I doubt an American version can compare to the original, but I'm happy to watch and find out.
 
C

Catvoca

Banned
This is a great show. The fact they have Alex Horne there for the U.S version makes me hopeful. Reggie Watts is great too, hopefully we get some weird musical interludes.
 
T

Taker666

Member
A real shame they didn't bring Greg Davies over as well.

It's a great format in itself but Greg brings so much to the show. It'll be hard to measure up.
 
M

mclem

Member
Taskmaster is phenomenal; this is wonderful news. And please, it's now the BAFTA-NOMINATED Taskmaster.

Catvoca said:
This is a great show. The fact they have Alex Horne there for the U.S version makes me hopeful. Reggie Watts is great too, hopefully we get some weird musical interludes.
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Alex Horne's involvement leads me to hoping that there'll be a Tim Key involved too, somewhere behind the scenes.


(Also, UK Taskmaster people: if Dave are continuing what they've done before, we should get the first episode of the new series online today!)
 
M

mclem

Member
I'm trying to imagine if there would be a US equivalent of the Taskmaster Cottage, because I think that's a big part of the 'feel' of the show. It needs to feel a bit distant from the world, yet close enough to a major urban centre that contestants can make use of various businesses you might find in a city. The UK one is in London, which makes perfect sense (In fact, I notice it's near Mortlake, which makes me wonder if it's visible during the Boat Race)

Trying to think where would be a good location for the US one. Quirky, and in a city but not *too* city-like.
 
W

wetflame

Pizza Dog
Reggie Watts doesn't seem like the best fit - completely changes the dynamic of the show. Greg's whole point is that he can be mean and award points completely unfairly, not something I can see Reggie doing. Plus I think Reggie's shtick is a little tired these days, he's a better musician than I can see him being as host. It's a fantastic format though.

Alex Horne actually created the show as something he performed for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before it became a TV show, so if he's still involved that's good news.
 
M

Mindwipe

Member
Taskmaster is a great show, but it's very talent lead so it'll entirely depend on who they book, and Reggie feels like a much worse fit than Greg.
 
T

Tregard

Soothsayer
mclem said:
I'm trying to imagine if there would be a US equivalent of the Taskmaster Cottage, because I think that's a big part of the 'feel' of the show. It needs to feel a bit distant from the world, yet close enough to a major urban centre that contestants can make use of various businesses you might find in a city. The UK one is in London, which makes perfect sense (In fact, I notice it's near Mortlake, which makes me wonder if it's visible during the Boat Race)

Trying to think where would be a good location for the US one. Quirky, and in a city but not *too* city-like.
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Yeah this is something I've been puzzling over a bit, part of me wonders if they'll just use the Taskmaster Cottage in London for the first series. Somewhere in Portland, perhaps?

wetflame said:
Reggie Watts doesn't seem like the best fit - completely changes the dynamic of the show. Greg's whole point is that he can be mean and award points completely unfairly, not something I can see Reggie doing. Plus I think Reggie's shtick is a little tired these days, he's a better musician than I can see him being as host. It's a fantastic format though.
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Yeah I watched a bit of Reggie once I heard the news, he's fun, but I do fear he can't be as unnecessarily harsh as Greg can be. He needs to be outrageous so that Alex can play the straight man.
 
M

mclem

Member
Einchy said:
This feels like a bad Japanese game show.
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I've argued before that it's probably closest to the sort of things that Koreans do - being a very open-ended format, allowing a lot of individual creativity - but with a distinctly British flavour.

dh4niel said:
Never even heard of this show before. I don't watch much TV in the first place. :/
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The channel's largely a comedy repeats one but has recently been looking into homegrown content (also worth a look: As Yet Untitled, which is just a bunch of comedians having a rambling chat about stuff), but this has been a big hit by their standards and it's really getting a lot of good word of mouth. And the award nominations haven't done it any harm!
 
H

Hystzen

Member
mrklaw said:
I loved the episode where they had Josh Widdicombe counting baked beans or something
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Yeah they made it seem like it was a task but he was just been trolled.

New season starts on 28th in UK seen billboards up which seems be first challenge
 
M

mclem

Member
Hystzen said:
Yeah they made it seem like it was a task but he was just been trolled.

New season starts on 28th in UK seen billboards up which seems be first challenge
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That's an online-only thing (at least, it's been described in terms that suggest that it's not appearing as part of the show). There's a preamble here

(Interesting that this has a "Taskmaster Shorts" branding, which makes me wonder if they'll be producing more to be used as filler programming on Dave, or cut down previous tasks into a 5-minute-or-so format)

And the new series *might* start tonight, in that Dave tend to release initial episodes of series a week in advance online - only they had technical difficulties so couldn't do that yesterday!
 
T

Tregard

Soothsayer
mclem said:
I've argued before that it's probably closest to the sort of things that Koreans do - being a very open-ended format, allowing a lot of individual creativity - but with a distinctly British flavour.



The channel's largely a comedy repeats one but has recently been looking into homegrown content (also worth a look: As Yet Untitled, which is just a bunch of comedians having a rambling chat about stuff), but this has been a big hit by their standards and it's really getting a lot of good word of mouth. And the award nominations haven't done it any harm!
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Also "Go 8 Bit" is quite highly recommended it must be said!
 
T

tomtom94

Member
I think Taskmaster is basically the "pure" form of Top Gear television - that is, Top Gear was a show that was ostensibly about cars but was actually about people ribbing each other and doing stupid things. Taskmaster has no such pretensions and is all the better for it.
 
D

daviyoung

Banned
This programme is such a piece of shit. Just a bunch of D-list comedians who would be better suited to the back room of a pub sitting around sniffing their own farts and expecting the audience to laugh at their strained in-jokes.
 
W

wetflame

Pizza Dog
daviyoung said:
This programme is such a piece of shit. Just a bunch of D-list comedians who would be better suited to the back room of a pub sitting around sniffing their own farts and expecting the audience to laugh at their strained in-jokes.
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Well, you're entitled to your opinion. What do you recommend we watch instead?
 
D

DumbNameD

Member
According to the person's twitter,
Ron Funches
will be one of the contestants on the US version:
"Taping @reggiewatts' new show #Taskmaster has been some of the most fun I've ever had in my life. Not work but life in general. Thank you!"
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Also, the funny thing about the Josh Widdicombe bean counting thing was
that the point that he got for the counting actually made a difference in the final tally.
 
A

Arials

Member
Most of the clips that get uploaded to the UKTV youtube channel make the shows look weirdly sterile and crap, they do shows like Taskmaster and Go 8 Bit a disservice. Tree wizard though, they couldn't mess that one up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56QUdGP33w4

I don't know who this American guy is, but if they're losing Greg Davies' slightly sadistic headmastery vibe that isn't a good sign.
 
M

mclem

Member
DumbNameD said:
According to the person's twitter,
Ron Funches
will be one of the contestants on the US version:
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I remember seeing a name bandied around as having been mentioned as associated with it due to a posting on Snapchat or Instagram or something like that, but I couldn't find what it was referring to to corroborate it in any way - didn't help that it wasn't a name I was familiar with either!

Dillon Francis
mean anything to anyone? Supposedly that was confirmed on Snapchat, but as I said, I've not seen any actual evidence of that, so take with appropriate salt.
 
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