Trash Talk and Chutzpah: Taskmaster Series 19 Looks Like the Most Competitive Yet

The secret of Taskmaster – the long-running comedy nonsense series that started life on Dave and now airs on Channel 4 in the UK – is that its contestants really want to win. The show’s comedians often feign insouciance and a take-it-or-leave-it approach to scoring points, but even its coolest customers secretly harbour a desire to land at the top of the league table.

Usually, that inner competitive fire is tamped down in true British style, only emerging in jets of eyeball-shooting flame when some unfairness or poor sportsmanship is detected in the studio. Not this time. This time there’s Jason Mantzoukas.

Mantzoukas, star of The League, Big Mouth, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place and more, is Taskmaster’s first bona fide US import. Previous seasons have welcomed ex-pats from America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand who live in the UK full time (your Desiree Burch, Katherine Ryan, Mae Martin, Sarah Kendall, Sam Campbell and Rose Matafeo), but Mantzoukas is the first US star to travel to Chiswick on purpose in order to fill a windsock with tangerines from the greatest distance, or whatever silliness the team have cooked up this time around. Who knows, he may also be the only US person to travel to Chiswick on purpose full stop.

And to judge by Mantzoukas’ introductory interview with creator and Taskmaster’s Assistant Little Alex Horne, the man is making his presence felt:

Trash talk, chutzpah, promises to bury his rivals in a shallow grave, exhortations for couples watching at home to use his performance as an on-screen sex aid, and an energetic exit. Jason Mantzoukas has stepped Taskmaster up a notch.

You thought he was confident? Meet comic Fatiha El-Ghorri, whose post-task-pre-studio interview shows her matching Mantzoukas every step of the way. Neither are intimidated by the prospect of being judged by the Taskmaster, and both are promising a ground-shaking victory and world domination. Neither competitor is hiding their desire to win under the usual affected diffidence or clueless panic. They’re in it to win it and they don’t care who knows it.

Taking a very different tack is Ghosts, Yonderland and Horrible Histories’ Mat Baynton, who’s chosen to compete in series 19 wearing a breathable, monogrammed marathon runner’s outfit. Baynton’s interview (filmed at Painshill Park in Cobham, Surrey) shows him fulfilling the more traditional Taskmaster role of the nervous, paranoid and shellshocked contestant uncomfortable with predicting victory and happier to foresee doom. Think Joe Thomas dressed as one of the men from the 118 ads.

We’ll see the cut of the final two contestants’ jib when the intro interviews for Rosie Ramsey (whose husband Chris Ramsey lost out on a series 13 win to Sophie Duker) and comedian Stevie Martin (note that all-important ‘i’) arrive online ahead of series 19’s debut episode airing this week.

Taskmaster series 19 airs at 9pm on Thursday May 1 on Channel 4 in the UK.

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