It’s a long, cold wait between seasons Taskmasterespecially after an entry as great as series 16. Luckily, the hilarious British panel show has kept its growing international audience entertained between seasons by uploading episodes of one of its many licensed spin-off series to its YouTube channel. Taskmaster New ZealandThe first two seasons of the series have now started the official Taskmaster YouTube account, including the incredible Season 2, which originally aired in 2021 and is one of the best seasons of any version of Taskmaster. If you consider yourself one Taskmaster fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
As a licensed spin-off, the show’s structure, music and set design will be immediately familiar to anyone who watched the original series. And that includes the task design, which dutifully follows Alex Horne’s excellent mold, with tasks so good they’re the only Taskmaster spin-off where the British version borrowed a few. Taskmaster NZ will often embrace the simpler, shorter tasks that Horne told us he prefers: tasks as short as “flying” or “time travel,” which encourage creativity and different solutions from different participants. But there’s also plenty of room for the more chaotic tasks: a team task where the participants have to create a diss track about the other team is great, and “Construct the least suitable wedding cake” results in a hilarious bloodbath.
The first season of Taskmaster NZ is definitely worth a watch (shout out to the hilarious Angella Dravid), but the second season of Taskmaster NZ deserves its place among the best Taskmaster series, period. The season 2 contestants are perfect, with the right mix of personality types and approaches to the competition.
The contestants hit all the notes you want from a Taskmaster cast: You have the person who doesn’t care about the show, but in a hilarious way (Urzila Carlson). There’s the person who cares about you deeply, but can’t seem to do anything right (David Correos). You have the person who tries extremely hard to win (Laura Daniel). There’s the person who focuses all his energy on making hilarious television, duties be damned (Guy Montgomery). And you have an old Taskmaster friend who likes to push his buttons (Matt Heath). Awesome Taskmaster seasons come from the right combination of contestants, and this group has the perfect alchemy of varying levels of “taking this ridiculous ordeal seriously.”
Image: Channel 4
Paul Williams is a great replacement for Alex Horne, who brings his own super dork energy to the role of the Taskmaster’s assistant. Unfortunately, Jeremy Wells is no Greg Davies, lacking the latter’s intimidating presence and often leaving his assistant’s bullying to the participants (thankfully Urzila is more than happy to shoulder this particular burden). He seems a little uncomfortable with the role at times, and I think some of his scoring decisions can be downright bizarre.
Astute Taskmaster viewers will also notice a different approach to editing. The New Zealand version uses more interventions during tasks on the participants’ responses, allowing the group to play against each other even more and show great camaraderie. However, some short sections have clearly been removed from the YouTube uploads, which may make for some odd cuts, but nothing that will detract much from your experience.
So while you’re trudging through the long wait for series 17 of Taskmaster UK (which airs this spring), all is not lost. You can spend that time watching one of the funniest Taskmaster seasons yet. Fortunately, it has never been more widely available, so you have no more excuses. To enjoy.