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[ID: Four screencaps from Taskmaster. Alex Horne holds up one bare wrist, where he would normally wear a watch, and says with a frown, "Right, I don't know how long you've got left." Phil Ellis, trying to carry a chair through a doorway, says, "Well, none of us do, don't we? But isn't that life's big question? Part of the fun of it, really." End ID.]
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XXL NEWS! Greg and Alex are coming to America in January 2026 to spread the word of the Taskmaster. Shows in Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C. and New York! Sign up to our mailing list for pre-sale access.
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The Taskmaster Guys Know What Youâre Watching For
Alex Horne and Greg Davies on season 20âs most ludicrous tasks and their undeniable chemistry.
(Someone said this interview was behind a paywall, so here's the whole thing for anyone who wants to read it)
Spoilers follow for the season-20 finale of Taskmaster, which premiered on YouTube at 5 p.m. Eastern on November 13.Â
Every episode of the British game show Taskmaster is a new experiment in reading comprehension, creative thinking, and wondering, Which of these five contestants will lose their patience first? Itâs harder than it looks to win a horse race while eating a plate of olives and grapes and throwing darts, or painting a portrait using only substances you can dribble out of your mouth. Itâs great television.
Taskmaster has a simple conceit: Five comedians or performers compete against one another for the approval of the tyrannical Taskmaster, a role played with gusto by Greg Davies. The Taskmasterâs âassistant,â âLittleâ Alex Horne, introduces the contestants to the Taskmaster House in London, presents them with their tasks, and oversees their performance over a number of weeks. (Horne, who created and executive-produces the show, also designs all the tasks and scores and performs the seriesâ music with his band, the Horne Section.) After the tasks are finished, the five contestants meet in a studio in front of a live audience, where they watch the tasks back with Davies and Horne and receive points for their performances from Davies. At the end of the season, the contestant with the most accumulated points wins a meaningless prize: a bust of Daviesâs head.
Over ten years, Taskmaster has gathered a rabidly adoring fan base in the U.K., where itâs a cornerstone of the comedy-panel-show circuit and spawned a cottage industry of podcasts and international versions. Its joys are many: the discovery of new comedians, the chemistry among the cast members, the outlandishness of the tasks themselves, and the lovingly prickly dom-sub dynamic between Davies and Horne in studio. Each season feels like a highly choreographed descent into comedic madness, especially this yearâs two offerings. Season 19 featured the seriesâ first American contestantThe expat Desiree Burch competed on season 12, but Mantzoukas was the first American based in the U.S. to appear on the show., Jason Mantzoukas, who made it his mission to destroy as much of the Taskmaster House as possible. Season 20 returned to an all-British lineup with contestants Maisie Adam, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Phil Ellis, Ania Magliano, and Reece Shearsmith, whose varying reactions to the tasks â hysteria, confusion, and, in Bhaskarâs case, couldnât-be-fucked resignation â demonstrate the seriesâs comedic range.
Thanks to Taskmasterâs growth in viewers and YouTube subscribers, the 20th season also featured a new release model. For the first time, weekly episodes aired simultaneously in the U.K. and U.S. on YouTube. And with Taskmaster renewed by Channel 4 through 2026 and series 21 already filmed, Horne and Davies are keeping the momentum going. âGreg and I know less about the show than any of the people who watch it. We wouldnât know if we were filming episode No. 200 or 113,â Horne says. âWe move on fairly swiftly to the next weird, intense bit. Series 20 goes, and weâve done Series 21. In our heads, theyâre the next special people.â
Youâve now made more than 200 episodes of Taskmaster and the show has been on for a decade. Did you do anything different from previous seasons to celebrate?
Greg Davies:Â I donât think we ever discussed doing anything special because it was number 20. I donât think him and I are sentimental enough about round numbers.
Alex Horne: Itâs exactly that. Each series, we think, Letâs make this one better than the last one. But you donât want to single out this particular group of five people. Itâs more of the same and hopefully completely different, rather than saying, âThis is special.â
G.D.:Â Otherwise weâd have a lot of upset comedians thinking we didnât think No. 17 was special. Each one does feel like a whole new thing. The combinations are always unique in their response to things.
This season ended with an unprecedented three-way tiebreak between Ania, Maisie, and Phil. The contestants had to remember how many instances of the letter T were in the American Gothicâstyle portrait of you two in the houseâs living room. None of them correctly remembered it was four, but Maisie had the closest guess with five, so she won the season. What do you remember about the energy in the studio when that happened?Â
ï»żA.H.: It was quite weird. Itâs the finale, but the audience hasnât seen anything else. We keep them up to date a bit, but they donât know the running jokes. We sometimes have to say, âJust so you know, this has happened.â But there is also a sense of occasion by episode 10. We knew this one was close, but we didnât know it was that close. And it did feel momentous, maybe because it was series 20. But I think it was a surprise mainly because Maisie had been so rubbish throughout, but she ended up in the top three!
G.D.:Â Yeah, and sheâd been very cross, and normally the people who are very cross donât end up winning.
âI wouldnât have predicted Maisie would win something that involved measured thought,â says Horne. Photo: Avalon/Channel 4
Part of the seriesâ in-studio dynamic is this homoerotic relationship between you two, which this season got very specific with Alex mentioning the fan fiction, and Greg, your joke about leaving lube in the park. How do you maneuver acknowledging the fansâ shipping without feeling like youâre crossing some kind of line?
ï»żG.D.: Well, I think that any homoeroticism on display is entirely those peopleâs fault. Weâre very suggestible human beings, and itâs funnier to lean into that stuff than it is to refute it. But maybe itâs there, Roxana. Iâm open to there being feelings between Alex and I that we havenât yet explored. [Laughs.]
A.H.:Â I also think itâs quite fluid. Sometimes thereâs a season where, for some reason, we are quite intense in our relationship, and sometimes weâre quite cold. Itâs just like life.
G.D.:Â Itâs like any marriage.
A.H.:Â We blow hot and cold. We should organize some special time, though, Greg. You know, make sure we donât let things die completely.
G.D.:Â We should. I find it as fascinating as you, Roxana. I donât know quite where it came from, but all I would say is, We have a lot of fun. And if thereâs something about it in the atmosphere, then weâll explore it.
A.H.:Â We feel pretty safe in each otherâs company in a comedy way. We know each other pretty well.
G.D.:Â What Alex means by that is he feels safe because heâs a married man. And he thinks that provides some level of âthings canât change.â And what I would say is, Things do change.
Alex, youâve said tasks really take shape after the fifth contestant has finished, because then you get a sense of the edited narrative of the task. Was there a task this season that had the easiest narrative to envision?
ï»żA.H.: The Snakes and Steps task was pretty clear. It was such an elaborate setup. A two-parter task is really annoying for us in production because itâs twice the work. You film half of it at the house and half of it on location. We let them design the board, and they didnât know what was coming. It was out of our control, and it was very nearly that all five of them completed it so simply, but the fact that the game didnât fall Reeceâs way, that was just a really fun, easy narrative to go, âWeâll have four people doing it quickly, and then thereâs Reece.â It wasnât hard to tell the editor what we wanted.
Do you have a favorite task from this season?
G.D.:Â My problem is remembering, isnât it?
A.H.: Me too. Weâve done another series since. The making-things-awkward task was good.
G.D.:Â That was great. That was my favorite from the season.
A.H.: We did this heist one, which happened to come out the same week as the heist at the Louvre, which I really enjoyed. I do like the big-scale team tasks.
G.D.:Â The heist was the most excited Iâve seen our director, Andy Devonshire, and heâs quite an excitable gentleman, so thatâs saying something. He loved the filmic nature of that.
A.H.:Â Sometimes we literally forget 50 percent of the tasks or more.
G.D.:Â Thatâs me. Heâs being kind. Iâm the one that has to be reminded of whom weâve had on the show. Granddad gets sleepy!
Every season casts five people who have palpable chemistry. What do you consider to be a successful dynamic for the cast?
G.D.:Â Iâve never not been confounded by how any group of five have presented themselves under pressure. There is a science to putting the right people together, but I donât think the science ever adds up the way we thought it would.
A.H.:Â We do try to think about, if weâve got somebody whoâs a bit dry, we need somebody sparky next to them. If youâve got somebody whoâs older, we try to have somebody younger. But thereâs no magic formula. Sometimes the person you think to be dry is a real live wire. Sometimes theyâre a really friendly group, and sometimes theyâre really prickly â we canât see it coming. We just try to make variety. We donât want two of the same people, but weâve also discovered there arenât two people who are the same, really.
Is there one cast that surprised you the most?Â
A.H.:Â I would say series one was quite interesting, because it kicked it off. They immediately set up a WhatsApp group and some of us went to Cologne as a group afterwards, which you donât normally do after a TV show.
G.D.: There was one group we thought were going to be hard work in that we thought there were some fairly strident people in it, people who have sort of traded on confrontation, like Julian Clary. And then it was just a â60s love-in. They all fell in love with one another. It was in the Sue Perkins year, series 16.
A.H.: That was the one, because it was Sam Campbell and Julian. And we thought Julian was spiky on camera and off camera, but he was so lovely.
G.D.:Â They were hanging out all the time! To a great or a lesser extent, they all end up in weird lifelong friendship bonds, which speaks of what I said about how intense the world is for the time weâre there.
How does casting work? Do people submit themselves? Are you reaching out?
A.H.: It is a rough-and-ready process. Sometimes weâll hear that someoneâs interested. With Jason Mantzoukas, he came to us, which is unusual. Greg and I both have people we think would be brilliant, and we might talk to them personally. We hear about people through the grapevine who are sort of newer, because we donât have our finger on the pulse quite as much. But we have friends, like Ed Gamble or Tim Key, who do seem to know more than us. Itâs a small comedy community, and we know most people, I suppose. We talked about Eric Idle today. I suddenly realized, weâve never asked Eric Idle! I think heâd be brilliant.
âThere is a science to putting the right people together, but I donât think the science ever adds up the way we thought it would,â says Davies. Photo: Avalon/Channel 4
Greg, in season 16, you referred to Julian and his teammates, Sam and Lucy Beaumont, as âUncle Julian and the two lunatics,â which really speaks to the generational nature of the show. Often on teams, there is one older person paired with two younger people, like Sanjeev, Ania, and Phil this season. Why is that multigenerational balance is so important to the show?Â
ï»żG.D.: The comedy world over here is ever-changing. There are comics from different generations who treat performance and comedy in a different way, and itâs fascinating that performative styles are ever-shifting. If we had all 25-year-olds, thereâs a good chance we might have a group thatâs not too dissimilar from each other. You break that by having different generations. I also think a lot of good comedy is basically a family unit â we often end up having a mum, dad, or some version of a broken family. I love it when a family bond starts.
A.H.: Although we split them into a two and a three for the teams, which is kind of arbitrary and weird because itâs not fair, but it balances out somehow. Sometimes itâs an uncle and two lunatics. With Ed Gamble, it was him, Katy Wix, and Rose Matafeo, who were quite similar ages, and then Mom and Dad were David Baddiel and Jo Brand together. You had the generations with each other and Brand and Baddiel having cups of tea all the time. Hopefully itâs different dynamics each time. For teams, it comes down to whoâs available when. Sometimes I do think, Who would go well with someone? But at the end of the day, if they canât make filming work, theyâre just shoved into whichever side that fits.
James Acaster was on Vultureâs Good One podcast, and he described coming into the Taskmaster House thinking he would tackle each task with a certain strategy, but when he got there, all that planning went out the window. Greg, you mentioned watching that happen with every cast, to a certain degree. Do you think this is a show that can support strategy, period?
ï»żA.H.: I donât think you can have much of a plan, because we want people to be themselves and react in the moment. If youâre thinking, I plan to do it in this way, I just donât think youâre going to be as funny. Jason actually had more of a plan than anyone else because he knew the show inside out and he wanted to make a splash and do his thing. But in general, I tell people, no pre-prepared jokes, nothing that youâve rehearsed.
G.D.: It doesnât really allow for that. They donât get a chance to apply an existing comedic persona to this, because thereâs, you know, ducks to be fished out of a pond or whatever. And Alex is very good at wrong-footing people. If I go on a panel show about current events, I will enforce the Greg Davies comedy persona as best as I can. You canât with Taskmaster, you just have to roll with it. People reveal sides of themselves they wouldnât normally reveal.
Alex, how are you coming up with tasks? What is your process?Â
A.H.: Without seeming too pretentious, I do see it as writing jokes. I did stand-up comedy for a long time. You have a constant bubbling of ideas as a comic; you notice things and think, Thatâs interesting. Now my intuition is tuned to what would make a good task. I do have a constant load of notes on my phone, and then I go away for two days somewhere and try to solidify them. I used to go to my hot tub a lot because thereâs no distractions. I donât have a hot tub currently, which is tragic. Itâs dog walks now. Each season, I have a general number, which is about 30 individual ones. You only need 25 because you have the team ones as well. Weâre quite lucky that if a task fails, often, itâs still funny. And if I look bad, then thatâs funny.
G.D.:Â Roxana, his ability to constantly churn out tasks is borderline perverse. Itâs as close to an illness as you can get. And Iâll honestly say, in 20 seasons, Iâve not heard him complain once. When I write, I smash my home up with rage. He just has this bizarre ability to keep surprising us.
A.H.:Â Iâm coming up with half a script where they complete it. I write the setup line and they do the punchline.
G.D.:Â Itâs still remarkable. And Iâm not one to praise him, as you know.
James also said that on his first day, he filmed five tasks. Alex, do you have a sense of how many tasks it takes for competitors to feel like theyâve found their groove?Â
A.H.:Â Day one is definitely different to day two. Day one, theyâre slightly mad and slightly more skittish. By day two, theyâre ready. We often give two different contestants different tasks on day one and day two. They might come at it from a day-two persona compared to a day-one persona. Itâs quite nice to not have everyone rabbit-in-the-headlights on the same task.
G.D.:Â I didnât actually know that. Thatâs interesting.
A.H.:Â Itâs slightly manipulating them, but only insofar as theyâre getting the same task on a different day.
Greg, have you ever suggested a task?
G.D.:Â In our very early discussions for the show, when Alex first approached me, he did say, âIf youâd like to be part of the task team, we could make that part of the deal,â but it quickly became apparent that he doesnât need me to do that. I would happily sit and brainstorm, but I just donât think he needs it.
A.H.:Â Itâs only me and the tiny production team who know all these tasks intimately. When people suggest tasks, we tend to say, âYeah, weâve done that one,â or âYeah, we tried that, it didnât work.â Iâm sure Greg could come up with loads of good stuff, but I think we know our roles. Thereâs something funny about the fact that Greg doesnât come up with the tasks that they have to complete for him.
G.D.:Â Weâve always enjoyed that idea, that Iâm such a lazy dictator that my instruction is âI want them to be put through a difficult situation. You decide what.â Itâs quite in keeping with dictators from history, really. Theyâre very rarely on the detail of it.
Taskmaster has one the best editing teams in television in terms of creating distinct narratives about the tasks and how theyâre performed. One of the recurring elements is that if one personâs performance for a task has been singled out, that means they either did well or they did horribly. How else would you describe the approach to the performance montages?Â
A.H.: The editors are the most important, unheralded group. Hopefully each montage is slightly different. As soon as we get five people having completed a task, we start the editing of that task. Each one takes like a week, so thatâs about 30 weeks. We have three editors, and itâs a rolling thing. Itâs laborious, in a positive way. Thereâs a lot of instinct, and people thinking, This feels like this would work next to that one. You have the light and shade, somebody being really talkative next to someone being silent. We treat each task individually as a mini little film.
G.D.:Â Nearly every task, thereâs someone who absolutely loses their mind, and then thereâs someone whoâll find a funny angle and someone whoâs victimizing Alex. So much ends up on the cutting-room floor because the contestants give us so much to do with the edit.
A.H.:Â We do an edit for the studio guessing where the laughs will be. Weâre trying to leave a little gap after a funny line. And then we do another edit after the studio to tighten up the tasks. It goes through a lot more editing than most comedy panel shows.
Greg, sometimes when a contestant tries to advocate for themselves, or for other people, you seem to have a reaction of, âIâm not going to do what you tell me to do.â Iâm curious how much of that is you maintaining the Taskmaster persona.Â
G.D.: If you watch the series from the beginning, you can see a real change in the Taskmaster in the studio. Iâve got quite soft in recent years, but that our dynamic has changed subtly as well; perhaps Iâm not so vindictive to Alex anymore. In the last couple of seasons, Iâve allowed people to change my mind, whereas perhaps in the early seasons, I would do exactly what youâve said, be dogged in scoring it the way I wanted to. Itâs much easier to say, I am this mad dictator who wonât change his mind. In recent seasons, itâs a bit more nuanced because we all know what weâre doing. People donât mind that flexibility. Sometimes theyâll do a big group task where everyone did so many creative, wonderful things, and if we take the letter of the law, there will be people who should score zero because they didnât tick off one aspect of the task. More recently, weâll let those things slide because it feels in the spirit of the response. But at the same time, weâve reserved the right to decide.
A.H.:Â In the old days, Greg and I used to meet up in the week before and prepare a bit more. Now we try to keep it as fresh as possible. Greg will have some things he knows he might say, but I wonât tell him what Iâm gonna say, and he wonât tell me what heâs gonna say.
G.D.: Thereâs no lies in what you see. I donât prejudge the tasks. Iâll sometimes watch some of the more complicated videos beforehand, because otherwise Iâll miss things in the studio â itâd be preposterous for me to suggest Iâm seeing them all for the first time. But I watch them in isolation. And I try not to score them until weâre in the room. I canât explain it â thereâs a bizarre alchemy in the studio that affects what youâre watching. Social media is constantly accusing me of being inconsistent and throwing people under the bus on a whim. Thatâs never the case. I always, in the moment, score it the way I see fit. Iâm frequently wrong. But in that part of our universe, they are subject to my whims. And Iâm a judge whoâs been asked to make multiple judgments over a 2.5-hour piece of improvisation.
Have there been any contestants whose in-studio personas were really memorable to you? Iâm thinking of Fatiha El-Ghorri on season 19 trying to get you to marry her, or this season, Aniaâs running gag that you, Greg, are secretly her biological father and abandoned her.Â
G.D.:Â Fatiha deciding she was going to make me her husband happened fairly spontaneously in one of the episodes, and we both kept looping to it. I think Ania had thought of how the dates add up that I could be her father, which I find vile and depressing. But I loved her runner. I love seizing on those things.
A.H.: For me, Fern Brady and John Kearns in series 14 were sparky and funny. We didnât know what they were going to say. And similarly, Sam Campbell was definitely one of our favorites. Itâs always nice when thereâs someone who we think, Oh, weâve not had that type of person before.
G.D.: My favorite thing thatâs been said to me personally was Sam Campbell asking me if I was a child of divorce. Itâs simply the best thing thatâs been said to me on 20 seasons.
Have you ever considered or have people ever asked to be repeat contestants, outside of the tournament of champions?
A.H.:Â People want it, which spoils the magic. The question I get asked the most is, âWill you do a Loser of Losers?â Champion of Champions is one thing, but as soon as theyâve done it once, the bubbleâs burst a bit. They know how to play the game, and itâs not as natural. Also, having someone back means we donât have someone new. However, never say never. And we have some idea for the future where we might do something where some people come back, so we canât say much more.
Jason was the first American contestant from the U.S. who was coming over to film, rather than an American who now lives in the U.K. Has his appearance opened the door to other Americans?
A.H.:Â Weâre really open to it. Weâre not trying to court America, but there are voices that can be on the show. Yes is the answer.
G.D.:Â We love that weâve got different nations wanting to be part of the madness.
A.H.:Â It helps that Jason wasnât well-known here, but everyone said, âOh, that guy!â Heâd been in a lot of things, but heâs not your go-to. If you were to name an American comedian everyoneâs heard of here, it wouldnât be him. He was a really useful first.
Iâve been asked by my colleagues to say certain names to you, and Iâm wondering if you would tell me, have you ever approached them to be on the show? The first one is Matt Berry.
A.H.: Heâs on a list and I think heâd be great. I donât think weâve approached him, and Iâd like to know if heâd want to do it. Heâs got a great persona. I havenât seen him be Matt Berry that much.
G.D.:Â Thatâs what I was going to say. I would be absolutely fascinated by that, because thereâs such a strong flavor to every character Matt plays. I have met him, but very briefly. He couldnât be as flamboyant as his characters; he seemed quite quiet by comparison. That would be intriguing.
Emma Thompson.
G.D.:Â A national treasure over here, and famously outspoken. I think sheâd be a great challenge for me in my role. She immediately commands more authority than me, so Iâd have to dig deep.
A.H.: I canât imagine her agreeing to do 10 episodes of our stupid show, but one would be great. Sheâs from Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurieâs era at Footlights. Any of that bunch would be great.
G.D.:Â Sheâd be great to have on one of the specials. Youâd have to see a return to me being quite dogmatic and strict. Thatâs the only way to contain someone as flamboyant as Emma.
David Mitchell, whose wife Victoria Coren Mitchell was on season 12.Â
G.D.:Â Weâve asked Mitchell loads.
A.H.:Â Weâre friends with David and we know him, and he said he didnât want to go on a show where he would be rubbish. And I think we can assure him he wouldnât be rubbish. And also, if he is rubbish, thatâs really funny. I havenât given up hope because we all know heâd be great on the show.
G.D.:Â Heâs one of the people weâll keep asking.
Stavros Halkias.Â
G.D.:Â I think Stavros is hilarious. I was watching him on a podcast two nights ago. Thereâs a wealth of people in your country we would love to have on the show. Iâd like to have Andy Samberg on it.
A.H.:Â I wanted Ali Wong. I think Ali Wong would be terrifying on it. Sheâs a funny lady.
There are so many international versions of Taskmaster now. Do you watch any of those, and if you do, have you learned anything about other countriesâ comedy cultures from doing so?
G.D.:Â Iâve seen clips here and there, and I donât indulge past that point because I am a sponge. If I see one of the Taskmasters with a certain characteristic or a new tick, I know Iâll start doing it.
A.H.:Â I havenât seen much, actually. My policy is, let them get on with it, because they know their countries more than I do. The Portuguese one is so different to us and much more flamboyant, a two-hour Saturday-night thing. Thereâs other ones that have less regard to health and safety â the Nordic countries, really. Sweden, they get to like, flag down trains and set fire to things a bit more than us. You can learn a bit about the countries, but I also think itâs quite a human show. People thought it was a very British show, but I donât think it is, really. Itâs just people doing things.
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