(December 10: UPDATE RELEASED! I'll throw the link to the updated countdown right here if anyone is interested in my opinions on the 15 other full-series contestants and seeing how much my opinion has changed over the past several months, but I'm not changing a single word of the post that follows to reflect any of that. I would find it dishonest to change the list once it's out there, so if you disagree with me on this post, maybe the other one will suit you better. Better look at both, I guess. But there you go, hope you enjoy reading/browsing!)
Over the past several months, I have become completely obsessed with the British game/panel show Taskmaster. To those of you who don't know what this is, but are still here reading this post for some reason, Taskmaster is a show that's been running for 6 years and 11 seasons released so far and is all built around comedians Greg Davies and Alex Horne (the latter of which is the creator of the show), who set up bizarre objectives for a panel of five comedians each season to complete, and then reward them all points based on how well they've done the task. At the end of each episode, the most points for that episode takes home a bunch of prizes brought in by each contestant at the start of the episode, and at the end of the season (which range from 5-10 episodes each), the point leader wins a terrible gold bust of Greg Davies' head.
On the surface, this is indeed a fairly standard game show, but when you take into account the contestants are all (or at least mostly) comedians, the points given are based on Greg's opinions more than any objective right or wrong solutions, and the tasks themselves are incredibly absurd and often humiliating, the results definitely out-measure the sum of its parts. This is a ridiculous show that manages to reveal far more about the contestants than you might expect, both mentally and physically.
This isn't just a show you passively watch, it is a strangely interactive experience that gets you hooked into the points/scoring system, with you as an audience member tallying your own scores up to see how they stack up against the views of Greg and the tyrannical caricature of himself he has created. You find yourself thinking what you would do with each task as they come up, and when someone else does the thing you were thinking, you feel like a genius...at least until Greg gives them 1 point and calls them an idiot. Additionally, over lockdown the YouTube channel for TM has uploaded a series of "home tasks" for viewers at home to do and post online. It's a lovely diversion, but doesn't hold a candle to the main series.
