Taskmaster

Taskmaster is an inventive, companionable comedy whose chief weakness is how much depends on the changing company. Alex Horne, its creator and writer, gives people games that make their different approaches worth watching, without requiring us to care deeply about the competition. That sounds like a modest ambition, and it is one that comedy programmes can spoil by trying to look more important. There is no embarrassment here about the prospect of an evening spent being silly.

Greg Davies is the Taskmaster, with Alex Horne as his assistant, and the arrangement supplies a useful degree of ridiculous authority. A game involving doughnuts hardly requires such grand job titles, which is part of the pleasure. We laughed at the doughnut-eating challenge because it made the adults’ willingness to bother feel so recognisable. There is something cheering about a programme that takes this sort of play seriously enough to make it work.

The writing deserves credit for choosing activities that leave room for personality. An elaborate puzzle can reduce everyone to the same puzzled expression; these games offer scope for an approach we might admire, question or recognise as uncomfortably close to our own. Alex Horne’s inventiveness is valuable because the amusement continues beyond the initial explanation of the task. We become interested in how particular people will respond, and a simple activity can sustain more attention than its description would suggest.

Andy Devonshire directs, while James Dillon handles production design, and our strongest impression of their work is that it supports the foolishness without demanding separate admiration. This is a programme we remember through participants and games rather than through individual images. The production feels proportionate to the pleasure on offer, which matters when the subject is adults entertaining themselves. We never need an eating challenge to look like a major event; we need to enjoy the people attempting it.

The caveat is casting. A line-up can be perfectly capable and still fail to give the games much extra life. When the contestants enjoy one another’s company, the exchanges feel worth hearing even if the task itself is slight; a less responsive group makes us notice how much repetition the premise involves. We are more indulgent of an ordinary game than of an episode in which the people never quite interest us. Inventing another challenge cannot fully repair that.

That limitation is familiar in ensemble comedy, but it is particularly noticeable here because so much pleasure rests on temperament. We do not need every participant to be relentlessly funny, and the effort to dominate can be less enjoyable than a relaxed contribution. The programme is at its most welcoming when there is room for several different ways of being amusing. Its childishness helps: a shared appetite for messing about gives these people sufficient reason to spend time together, without needing to manufacture much else.

We would recommend it with that casting caveat, especially to anyone tired of comedy that seems anxious to prove its intelligence. Some company will suit us better than others, and an uneven line-up need not put us off the programme. There is no need to demand more seriousness from it. Watch it with someone whose approach to a simple problem has long puzzled you.