On Taskmaster Series 16

Series 16 of Taskmaster has been rambling on and is close to conclusion, but I’ve found myself not really enjoying it as much as previous series. There’s something about it that I just can’t place. Is it the cast? Is it the location? The theme? I don’t really know.

I think it’s the tasks. The tasks are more tedious than normal. A lot of them are “do X thing but also follow Y rules”. There’s also a couple of kinda repeat tasks. One is to make a gift for Greg, and the cast (except for Sam Campbell for some reason) gets given £50 to do so. Yet somehow they all come up with some pretty crap gifts. There was a previous “get a gift for Greg” task back in the early series, with a £20 budget and the gifts were way more interesting. Another part of it is that Alex is a lot less meek in these tasks, and has dialed up the annoying-ness alongside the tasks. He’s much more snarky now. Which is okay, but sometimes he goes a bit too far.

The location tasks are also odd. They seem to have hired, I don’t know, a golf course or something? It’s just this random building surrounded by green fields, but they don’t ever seem to go inside it. Compared to previous series, it’s a step down. An airport is pretty cool, but even the abandoned industrial area in series 15 was more interesting. In that, we had a fricking task on a fricking barge. In series 16, we just get a floor cleaner ridden down a straight road in front of this building.

The cast also aren’t really my favourite. Sue Perkins is the only comedian I know from before the series, and she’s alright, not on my top ten list. Sam Campbell has proven himself to be pretty damn funny, and I do very much enjoy how Julian Clary has this mean attitude towards Alex. Julian Clary has actually been pretty fun, and a good twist on the older, lazier player. Susan Wokoma, I want to like her, but she just seems to have disappeared into the background, and in general just seems bad at tasks. I expected more from her. Lucy Beaumont though, I just find her annoying. She’s intentionally stupid and trying too hard to be the cute, ditsy, dumb one. Worse, she keeps on fluking her way through tasks with no real skill, just happening to win because of disqualifications.

Speaking of which, what does annoy me is how many disqualifications there are. So many tasks have a way to be disqualified, to the point that there are multiple tasks where only 1-2 people even get points. Tasks with disqualifications can be interesting, but in series 16, they’re overdone. It’s made worse by how many more tasks have arbitrarily more weird, complicated rules to make the tasks more tedious.

There’s also a weird lack of team tasks. Which is sad because Sue Perkins and Susan Wokoma are a really excellent duo, even if they’re both crap at tasks together. Sam, Julian and Lucy are also a pretty good team, with Sam doing a lot of the heavy lifting. We don’t really get much of either though.

Another opinion of mine is that I’m weirdly not a fan of the new Taskmaster house. The main interior looks nice, but there’s way too much going on outdoors now. As well as the house and caravan, the plastic sphere is still there, so is the Greg statue and the shed, as well as the stage, but there’s also now, for some reason, a second ‘shed’ or mini caravan or something. They’ve used it a few times, but damn, that garden is getting cluttered.

Overall, series 16 has been alright, but I feel it’s also been pretty weak. I felt series 15 was kinda weak as well, but not nearly as much as series 16. Which is odd when every series has normally been getting better and better. Except for series 10, but I can forgive series 10 because that was a mess during the start of the COVID pandemic. At least I’ve been able to watch every episode on Youtube though, which is nice.