Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

Ooh, I didn't notice about the puddle reflections, that's a nice trick. I'm sure there are loads of wee Easter eggs in the linking shots. It took me about three series to work out that Alex was holding up the number of fingers of the episode part in the inserts cutting to and from ads.

It was also kind of mindblowing for reasons I couldn't quite fathom that the age-split of teams has Nick on the old person team. So I looked them all up and it's because there's ten years between the four younger ones then another ten years up to Steve.

Sophie youngest by four years, Jon and Joanne about the same age, then Nick about five years older than them but still ten years younger than Steve.

do they always split the teams by age? I always assumed it was mostly about scheduling and who was available to film stuff at the same time.

I don't think it's always by age but they like to have the teams contrast imo, age is one way to do that.

It seems quite age-based most of the time (basing entirely on Brand and Baddiel here, tbf) I haven't really looked it up.

Alan Davies and VCM an obvious age-split one as well

Season 7 for example it was gender based, Jessica Knappett is the same age as Acaster and Phil Wang but got paired with Kerry Godliman.

The pairings aren't always age-based: Frankie Boyle and Ivo Graham developed a weird father-son relationship in the Series 15 group tasks, for example.

I would have guessed Sophie was second oldest by a few years. She's had a hard paper round and is being played in the 'slightly crazy/menopausal woman' personality slot on the panel.

I was surprised as well but yeah she was born in '87!

I honestly don't know how old I thought Sophie was, but I'd absolutely have gone "older than Joanne" every day of the week.

aw I thought *every* reflection of nick had been removed but it's only the ones in that task.

Yeah I would've swapped Sophie and Joanne's real ages! (36 & 40 respectively)

Sophie has definite eccentric aunt vibes

I've been trying to work out who Nick Mohammed reminds me of and just realised it's Bobby G (the one from Bucks Fizz)

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/cryptic/29186

^ the pembleton crossword

Watched the episode last night. Picking away at the crossword, I've got about half done.

aside from a kind of boring cast, this season also seems to have more team tasks and more tasks that are about creativity (like make a portrait of this person using the contents of the hamper), which are usually less fun imo

they were more fun, dare i say it, when it was lucy and sam doing it...

(or bob or sally...)

i just prefer when the contestants are stressed out and tortured, not making fun drawings or videos or whatever

i agree this series is lacking something, there's no great spark between any of the contestants in the studio. anyway i finished the xword, had to reveal three or four but all solid clues imo, great job.

steve and nick are the first people i've seen posting about their experiences on twitterx, which is nice. but maybe that's just an algorithm thing.

I like the creative tasks. I agree that this series has generally been less laugh-out-loud funny than some, but I've still found it enjoyable in a more low key, gently amusing way. Maybe it's because there are fewer stand up comics than usual? (or at least fewer comedians who do wisecracking, riffing stuff rather than more character stuff?)

I find all the contestants likeable enough now (Nick is just hardcore adorable), but yeah not the funniest bunch.

Some of Greg's recent postmortems have been suffocatingly hilarious, on the other hand.

the channel 4 streaming service had some episodes of the Swedish version of Taskmaster available a while ago, and the Swedish one felt a bit like this, mostly not uproariously funny but the participants were all likeable and it was fun to watch, sometimes you don't want to see people straining to be funny or wring every last drop of comic possibility out of every riff.

I absolutely can't go Joanne McNally but the rest of them are very amiable and amusing without being annoying, and I also wish they had better tasks.

Agree on both counts.

Aw she's a bit grating but basically quite sweet.

ATTENTION, PUNKS:

lady parts actually good. and quite a scoop with the cameo.

was distracted by work through the taskmaster final and the announcement of next series contestants. andy, babatundi, emma, jack, rosy. couple of names i can't quite place.

Emma plays Rose Matafeo's flatmate in Starstruck. Babatunde seems mostly stand-up though he did do I'm a Celebrity recently and thus does things like Celebrity Gogglebox etc now as well. I assume you're familiar with the other three.

banatunde's name is familiar certainly. QI? Hignfy? but i tend to avoid things with Celebrity in the title which don't involve them making things.

i have watched all 3 series of Starstruck but still can't visualise a flatmate. i hope she's even half as good as RM, one of my favourite taskers.

speaking of which, what happened to junior TM she was going to present?

According to this official-looking page, the tasks were filmed in late 2023, but the page hasn't been updated in months. Does seem a bit odd.

(I didn't mean official-looking, but believable-looking, really.)

House of Games? xxpost to koogs

i checked imdb and there's a bunch of things under 'self' like Last Leg and 8/10 cats and as yet untitled

We went to a filming of Junior Taskmaster late last year (it was fun) - the one we saw was a round/ heat, and the winners of each of those were going on to film more tasks and then there would be more studio business. Haven’t noticed the next round of studio sessions yet.

Taskmasterclass (task-masterclass or taskmaster-class?)

i had forgotten some of the earlier contestants completely

the studio audience was a LOT closer when they were on Dave

that taskmaster thing was a one-off, given there's something else in the slot next week.

lady parts contained quite the euphemism this week - kfc bargain bucket for one...

i've been slowly rewatching taskmaster from the beginning and am on s6 now ... this is generally not one of my favorite series as the contestants are all kind of boring but tim vine in particular is probably the contestant i find the most annoying. i googled him and of course he's been in the running for that horrible "best joke at edinburgh fringe" contest multiple times. that group task where liza tarbuck finds the answer in the first minute and then tim vine and asim chaudhry ignore her and waste time for ten minutes until she finally just does the task herself, yuck.

Yes season six is probably the weakest (not counting those early ones where the format's not established).

New season starts next Thursday!

Tim Vine has a recurring role in Lee Macks's sitcom Not Going Out, which imo is as close as UK comedy gets to its own According To Jim.

We just watched season six - the last of the old seasons we hadn't watched (we only got into the show during lockdown and had been watching the previous seasons in order of a blog my partner found that rated them), and I don't know if it's because the most recent season was such a drag but I really enjoyed it - Asim Chaudry was a great contestant, I really liked Tim Vine, the two young ones were mostly rubbish (esp Russell Howard, who was uniformly unfunny and seemed to simply want to assert he was a 'proper' 'bloke' in each task), and Liza Tarbuck was a manic, mischievous energy I very much appreciated. Not peak TM by a long-run, but still fairly strong I thought.

Excited for the new series, though.

Russell Howard, “one of the world's top comedians” (Sunday Times)

A mate of mine worked for Deliveroo a while and delivered food to Russel Howard. He didn't tip.

Alice is very pretty but alas has a politics podcast with Matt Forde so is indefensible.

I rewatched all the serieses last year and concluded that Alice Levine is the least standout contestant they've ever had (is this what the young people call "mid"?). She's not super competent or incompetent or funny or anything, really. I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person.

I have to say, I love Tim Vine. I've been to see him a few times at the Fringe, and have laughed very hard at all his very stupid jokes. He's just excellent at what he does. I can see how not everyone could like what he does, however.

he should do a politics podcast with jeremy vine