#taskmaster video

[personinthepalace]

I love that jeremy almost falls out of his chair laughing haha

[transfemmbeatrice]

taskmaster contestants ask you things

[taskmastersource]

"You can't actually see my face at that point, but I was crying. I was actually crying."

— Nick Mohammed on TASKMASTER 17x05

[gregorycddie]

[vimbry]

love when greg davies latches onto a stupid sound that amuses him

[a-timely-problem]

Overheard at the BAU

The team: doing challenges during game night

Penelope: "For this task, you have to get this vase to the table without using your hands."

The rest of the team: "Alrighty!"

Spencer: "...like... not at all? Am I supposed to use my feet? Can I touch this with gloves and it doesn't count? Am I supposed to pick up other tools with my hands or would that disqualify me?"

The others: ...

Spencer: "I'm autistic, you should have seen this coming."

[thenaturalfriends]

Greg: It's gone from being a bit weird, cause I just called him 'Good Boy' one day--and afterwards he went, "Good Boy?!?"--and now we really only call each other Good Boy. And I do think we are good boys. Alex: Course we're good boys! Greg: I do think we are. Alex: We're good boys.

Bless @ninaolive for posting this video from the S17 New York Q&A.

[voice-of-illogical-sense]

"Fit Alex in this bin. Roll him down the hill, fastest wins (as if genuinely reading it for the first time)"

...(Alex, clearly worried that Greg Davies has swapped out a task).

@taskhusbands ; @taskmastercaps

[everyshadeofwrong]

greg's WOO + startled alex combo ✨

[ms-skaterat]

Okay fine, Qrs Tuvwxyz fancam!

(this is your fault btw @foggydayinspace lol)

[personinthepalace]

Taskmaster NZ 5x01: Abby Howells's Les Mis Skit - Do You Hear the People Sing?tas

[transfemmbeatrice]

the taskmaster asks you things

[taskmastersource]

TASKMASTER OUTTAKE: Rosie Jones' coffin.

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

shout out to this ledge on the latest taskmaster s17 bloopers vid on yt lol

[unquietspiritao3]

stumbling into kink

I know it’s fun and funny to incorporate “Alex designed Taskmaster around his kinks” into kayfabe (to be clear: if that were truly the case, he’d be a massive creep), but I also often think about how fun and funny it is that he has sort of just stumbled into making the kinkiest show on television by accident, simply by following the logic of British comedy, and I wanna talk about that, so here’s more meta for you!

First, the entire concept of the show is straight-up clown troupe hierarchy, which has been very popular in British sitcoms for decades. Like, Alex didn’t come up with that formula. There are tons of examples of it, as the article I just linked outlines. (tldr definition: “So what we see is a clear, closed circuit of hierarchy and status. The Whiteface is in charge, and the Augustes compete to impress him. The Character Clown is either low-status and appealing, or else occupies a role outside the status play, and is thus able to inject a different energy to keep things lively and unexpected.”) You can see how the formula is built around power imbalance.

Then, you add to this that the competition between the clowns has to be genuinely difficult, because a hard challenge is more entertaining to watch. Well, what’s a good way to make it more difficult to do a physical task? Bondage. Blindfolds. Discomfort. Other arbitrary rules and trickery. Lots of stuff that also gets utilized in kink because, in both cases, it plays into the power dynamic in addition to adding that challenge element. Alex has actually mentioned they’ve put a limit on how many times they use blindfolds in a series because it’s such a ‘gimme’ way to add an obstacle to a task that it would get repetitive.

Finally, I don’t know if you guys have noticed, but the entire BritCom scene is rather kinky to begin with. There are sooo many kinky jokes on every panel show ever. I don’t know about other places, but the British public, in particular, seems to find kink hilarious when it’s presented as a joke, so of course tons of the comics are going to use that, whether on Taskmaster or elsewhere. Taskmaster simply gives them the most opportunity due to the two factors I outlined above.

In conclusion, Taskmaster’s kinkiness is the natural logical endpoint of British panel show comedy, and Alex was the only guy committed to the bit enough to push it there.