I Absolutely Adored the 12th Series of Taskmaster

Taskmaster is currently my favourite show right now. It’s a UK comedy show that I’ve talked about before, explaining why I love it. There have been eleven prior series, with series 12 just finishing a few days ago (as of publishing). However, for series 12, I swear it flew by way too quickly. Why? Because I absolutely loved the entire cast.

As far as I’m concerned, this was one of the best series by far. I enjoyed every second of series 12.

But why?

The cast was amazing.

I’ve never seen a happier cast. Normally, there’s some sort of mini-conflict between members of the cast, as well as a few tropes. You have the overly competitive players, the ones that just don’t care and so on. In Series 12 though, the cast was filled with 5 amazing comedians. We had Alan Davies, Desiree Burch, Guz Khan, Morgana Robinson and Victoria Coren Mitchell, all of whom put up a great show, and were all unique and super friendly with each other.

The only trope was the smart person with by far the fewest points. While everyone else was INSANELY close, score-wise, Victoria struggled a lot. Not because she was bad, but because she spent every task overthinking, while the rest of the crew were more willing to wing it. However, even then, the rest of the cast were happily there to help her up.

What amused me the most though is Alan Davies. Throughout the entire series, he just seemed happy to be there, and was pretty much always laughing in the studio. I somewhat expected him to be the standard older, grumpier player but that really didn’t seem to happen.

As for Desiree, Guz and Morgana? All three of them were new to me and bloody hell did they put on a show.

The tasks were crazy and fun.

The tasks that the contestants have to do can be somewhat hit and miss. However, most of the tasks in series 12 were generally great. They had a unique setting in a large nunnery or something.

On the downside, some of the tasks seemed a little… cheaper than normal. I feel like we got a lot fewer team tasks as well, but, well, frankly, the ‘older’ team would really struggle. Alan could only carry Victoria so far.

Amazingly, despite the vast variety of tasks, the cast were all very consistent. Not in the same way, of course, but four of the five contestants were INSANELY close, score-wise. So close in fact that, in the final episode, anyone apart from Victoria could have won the whole series. At the very end, the winner was decided by one single point.

The final task was utterly hilarious

Normally, I find the final tasks of the show to be a little tedious and prone to failure. However, for series 12, the final task of the final episode was amazing. Everyone was trying to make sounds, trying to convince the Taskmaster that someone else had made that noise. Throughout the entire task, everyone was desperately trying not to laugh, as to not blow their cover, but they absolutely all broke down in the last round. In fact, this was probably one of my favourite final tasks ever, just because everyone was in hysterics.

I wanted everyone to win.

Unlike previous series, I actually found myself cheering for everyone. There was no one on the show that I didn’t want to win. Sure, I had my favourites, Alan and Desiree, but I would have been happy if any of them won. They all put on amazing performances and they all deserved the cheers we gave them.

No more Taskmaster for a while 🙁

There’s one sad thing though. Series 12 absolutely flew by. Every Thursday, a new episode came out. However, now that series 12 is over, we’ll just have to wait for series 13, which is probably miles away.

I suppose, at least I can easily re-watch the show. All of series 12 is on the Taskmaster Youtube page, as are several past series. Either way, I can’t wait for the next season, but I’ll also be re-watching series 12. That just goes to show how much fun the series was…