A widely beloved cultural institution, and now on its 19th season, we might have become inured to the ways in which Taskmaster quietly subverts precedent. Re-inventing both the double-act and the panel-show, as well as the evaluative model so central to light entertainment (Britain’s Got Talent, Project Runway, American Idol), the show deserves on-going celebration.
Each season sees five celebrity contestants completing ridiculous tasks, which are set and overseen by the Taskmaster’s Assistant, Alex Horne. These tasks are then scored by the charismatic Taskmaster, Greg Davies, in front of a live studio audience. Given Davies’s dominance and with both men’s personas very much in the service of the panel-show format, we don’t necessarily recognise their pairing as a double-act, but when we remember more conventional exemplars (Morecambe and Wise, the Two Ronnies for example) their subversive re-working of the model becomes marked.
Davies appears to be the crux of Taskmaster’s appeal, but Horne’s persona as his meek sidekick, Alex, ‘the deferential butler-worm, who appears to take quasi-sexual pleasure’ in Greg’s dominance (Parkin) is fundamental to the show’s success. The slave to Greg’s master, Alex helps reinforce Greg’s authority – burnishing his commanding presence. René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire suggests that far from freely choosing the objects of our desire, we instead learn what to desire or admire through the – often unconscious – imitation of others. In performing his adoration for Greg, Alex signals his value both to the panelists and to the audience, thus guiding their and our admiration. Indeed, one contestant, Julian Clary, describes a kind of ‘conditioning’ perpetuated by the show’s design, whereby ‘all you want to do is please Greg’. ‘Although it’s trivial’ he says, ‘that master-slave relationship does get to you in the end’. The dynamic is implicit in the tasks that require contestants to submit to Greg’s capricious judgement, but the conditioning Clary identifies is also testament to the gravitational pull of the master-slave dynamic partly modelled by Alex.
Davies’s own gifts are also key, of course. He clearly delights in reading people, and relishes the contestants’ particularity. Contestants have commented on the seductiveness of being closely observed – or ‘seen’; Mae Martin for instance, describes the effect of his insights as ‘intoxicating’ (Chortle). This specificity runs against the generic responses on so many other shows that center evaluation or judgement, which tend to the broadly, benignly positive and summon a rather mawkish affect (allowing figures like Simon Cowell to play off against that affective norm). Horne’s insights are characteristically understated but equally astute.
Taskmaster is also distinctive in its re-working of the panel-show format, replacing the more abrasive competition that was so defining of the British panel show (often between white, Oxbridge-educated men) with ‘a playful and joyful environment’, one which, instead of ‘pitting comics against each other’, gives them ‘space to enjoy what their opponents are doing’ (Brown). Horne has been careful to set tasks that evaluate competitors on a wide range of skills: physical, emotional, logical and otherwise. Comics who have been traumatised by appearances on other panel shows, or else avoided them altogether – Mark Watson for instance, and Fern Brady, who is autistic, ‘have both said that Taskmaster offered very different opportunities to be themselves’ (Brown). The fact that the contestants have a full season to develop is also significant and Horne has said that originally, broadcasters ‘didn’t think viewers would tune in the next week to see the same comedians, so we had to persuade then it was more like a sitcom than the panel show’ (Why Taskmaster).
Just as Horne allows Davies to shine, the show seeks to let each participant shine: its success thus in part the result of multiple levels of mirroring and modelling. Horne’s minor chord persona – pedantic, obsequious and compliant – is just one among many of the show’s pleasures and another facet of its gently subversive approach – as traits presumed weak become strong.
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Brown, Helen (2023) Greg Davies: ‘Being made to do any more maths than necessary would have been awful for me’, The Independent, 19 April, https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/greg-davies-interview-the-cleaner-taskmaster-b2319997.html
Parkin, Simon (2022) ‘Alex Horne on the secret to his cult show Taskmaster: ‘It must be offbeat but not wacky, off-kilter but not bonkers’’ The Guardian, 24 December, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/dec/24/alex-horne-secret-to-cult-show-taskmaster-offbeat-but-not-wacky-off-kilter-but-not-bonkers
‘Q&A with Julian Clary’ 2023, Channel 4, 22 September, https://www.channel4.com/press/news/qa-julian-clary.
‘Why Taskmaster was a hard sell..’ (2017), Chortle, 9 November, https://www.chortle.co.uk/features/2017/11/09/38372/why_taskmaster_was_a_hard_sell
‘People said, ‘you’re going to be shocked by how fanciable Greg Davies is.’ They weren’t lying.’ (2023) Chortle, 20 March, https://www.chortle.co.uk/interviews/2023/03/20/52741/people_said%2C_%E2%80%98you%E2%80%99re_going_to_be_shocked_by_how_fanciable_greg_davies_is._they_weren%E2%80%99t_lying.
Humour in the Arts 