Taskmaster

Greg Davies and Alex Horne return to judge a new batch of famous competitors and will decide who is worthy of taking home the coveted 24-carat gold cast of Greg Davies’s face.

The new contestants include Love Island narrator Iain Stirling, actor Joe Thomas (White Gold), stand-up comic Lou Sanders, Paul Sinha (The Chase) and RTS award-winner Sian Gibson. 

They will be joined by stand-up Lou Sanders, Paul Sinha (The Chase) and Sian Gibson (Car Share), all set to bravely face the challenges set by Taskmaster Greg Davies.

Creator and stats keeper Alex Horne will also be returning to the game show, which was originally performed at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Previous contestants include Jessica Knappett (Drifters), James Acaster (Would I Lie to You?) and Rhod Gilbert (8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown).

My working life was turned on its head nine years ago, the summer after I became a father. Presumably out of panic, I began two projects that were meant to run alongside my normal stand-up comedy, but these now dominate the working week.

My three children seem not to mind both ventures – for now, at least – and actually help on occasion.

We are currently filming the bulk of the eighth and ninth series of Taskmaster. What started as a one-night stand at the Edinburgh Fringe took on a life of its own – and took over mine.

If you’ve somehow managed to miss the show, it’s basically the strange thoughts you have in the shower, turned into a competition. ‘How do you make a snow globe?’, ‘From how far away can I blow out a candle’, ‘how high can a hose spray water?’. All the important stuff.

The sixth series has drawn to a close and Tim Vine, Russell Howard, Asim Chaudhry, Alice Levine and Lisa Tarbuck have all hung up their Taskmaster trainers and gone home for a rest. Now it’s the turn of a new bunch of comedians to face Taskmaster Greg Davies and his assistant Alex Horne!

Families around Britain have received a new houseguest: a big red button, which sits quietly until suddenly lighting up and challenging the families to a number of fiendish tasks.

UKTV has announced plans to build on the successes of 2017, which saw record viewing figures across its channels and soaring ratings for Gold’s Murder on the Blackpool Express. The broadcaster intends to increase its total number of commissioned hours from indies by nearly a third, and will push into commissioned drama.

This week's top television includes the finale of comedy series The Detectorists, a documentary exploring a year in the life of deaf teenagers, a new French crime drama from Walter Presents, and a special two-part series of Taskmaster: Champion of Champions.  

The programme, which has been a hit with UKTV audiences and earned nominations for RTS, Bafta and Emmy awards, began life on stage in Edinburgh, explained its creator, Alex Horne, at a sold-out event at the London Transport Museum.

Every month for a year, in the run-up to the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Horne asked a bunch of fellow comics to complete a daft task. “The first task I sent them was, ‘Deposit some money in my bank account – most money wins.’ Mark Watson put nearly £200 in; no one else got over a pound – and that funded the project.”