Taskmaster

Taskmaster, series one review

Greg Davies is fantastic; he's harsh, loud and ridiculous, completely giddy with power, and the relationship between Davies and Horne is clearly a long-lived one.

Taskmaster is the kind of Dave thing that shouldn't quite work but is actually wildly stupid fun. Mainly thanks to Alex Horne, late of so much splendid radio, and Greg Davies, and regulars such as Frank Skinner and Romesh Ranganathan. And eating a watermelon in a minute, and having to paint a horse while riding a horse and other activities that would have been unsuited to, say, Queen Victoria's funeral. A winner.

TV review: Taskmaster, Dave

For some reason The Guardian has piled into this programme and said that for a UK comedian their ultimate ambition is to appear on a panel show. Patent bollocks. Though it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of them will be queuing up to appear on Taskmaster.

Taskmaster: Nato should be informed of its banter

What the world needs is another comedy panel show, right? But wait... Dave's Taskmaster has added convoluted parlour games to the mix!

Great comedians can make anything funny. Eric Morecambe bleeding a radiator or Les Dawson reading out AutoTrader would be hilarious by default, but could modern standups work that same magic when, say, eating an entire watermelon or emptying a bathtub? Dave's new panel show hinges precariously on that premise, with a quintet of comics - this week including Frank Skinner, Tim Key and Roisin Conaty - performing acts at the behest of titular taskmaster Greg Davies. In practice, a premise unlikely to tickle the titter glands of many.

Radio Times review

As a civilisation, we're starting to realise that asking questions about news or trivia from behind a desk isn't the best way to wring semi-improvised laughs out of moderately popular comedians. Far wiser to make them do something less restrictive, where the thing itself is funny before anyone starts. So we come to this fun new jolly, where titular Taskmaster Greg Davies - flanked by the show's creator Alex Horne - awards comics marks for eating as much watermelon as they can in a minute, emptying a bathtub without pulling the plug out, or painting a horse while riding a horse.

The comfortingly familiar guests are Frank Skinner, Josh Widdicombe, Roisin Conaty, Romesh Ranganathan and Tim Key. Skinner is a good weathervane, since he's been around far too long to bother laughing politely at unfunny jokes. Here, he laughs a lot.

Some fairly interesting facts about comedian Alex Horne

The star of Dave's new show Taskmaster is a neologist with a penchant for Powerpoint...