I rewatched taskmaster series 10 over the past couple weeks and man that series is so underrated. johnny vegas is absolutely one of the all time greatest contestants, everything he said killed me. so many people on taskmaster are on the verge of a breakdown, but johnny vegas felt like he was perpetually hovering right on the other side of it, unable to stop having a breakdown. his emotional whiplash in the mannequin task from "WHY DID YOU HIDE THE HANGERS UNDER THE CHAIR?!" to crying "my boy... my beautiful boy..." after realizing he's smashed the mannequin's head open is one of the greatest moments in TV history, imo
katherine parkinson of course was just baffled the entire time. I think if there's one aspect of series 10 that is regularly acknowledged for how great it was, it's gotta be katherine. she truly had no idea what she was doing or what the show was. it's hard to pick a best moment for her but I was really losing it when she climbed into the christmas tree bagging machine and just froze halfway through as the absurdity of the situation washed over her. exquisite
a lot of the time on taskmaster, the super competitive tryhards are the least interesting people in the lineup, but I think richard herring set himself apart in two ways: his delight in being torn down by greg (he said it himself on the podcast, he couldn't get enough of greg insulting him) and how supportive he was of everyone else. you don't usually see the really competitive people arguing in favor of the others, but he was always as prepared to go to bat for someone else as he was to point out when they broke the rules. I think anyone would agree that richard's crowning moment has got to be the "learn the lines" task. legitimately very impressive!
daisy may cooper seems to be kind of polarizing in the fandom, which surprises me. I think especially on reddit, people tend to create a narrative in their heads and then lose sight of what really happened on the show, e.g. thinking iain stirling ruined series 8 (top tier series imo!) and I think daisy has become a victim of this too. she was having so much fun the whole time! she was the heart of the studio segments! nobody was laughing harder than daisy. anyone who remembers her as an aggressive jerk who hated her teammate is remembering wrong. this feels like a weird highlight but honestly if there was one moment where daisy made me laugh the hardest it was her brazen flirting in the "persuade this man to look in your bag" task. "bye, richie! bye, dickie!" god it makes me laugh just thinking about it
mawaan rizwan. jesus christ. yes, he tried to pump helium into an egg. the thing about mawaan that was so incredible was that he was so confident that everything he did would be amazing, it almost made you believe him. I don't know, man. maybe if he'd had more time he would've figured out a way to get the helium in there. no, I know, I know. it's impossible... but maybe? mawaan seemed like a guy who went into taskmaster with no preconceived ideas of what it wanted from him, and it meant he would sometimes completely circumvent the tasks... for better or worse. why press a button and take a time penalty to see what's behind the two-way mirror when you can just put your face right up against the glass? why build a marble run when you can just put it in the washing machine? it didn't always work, but I was always cheering for him even when he totally missed the point of the task. highlight: taking the doorbell back to the table on the beer mat task. who cares what the task was supposed to be?
I'll be rewatching series 11 next. I enjoyed it well enough at the time (all taskmaster is good!) but it landed very firmly at the bottom of my rankings. I know it's a fan favorite and I'd like to see what other people see in it. we'll see!
also, I did my own scoring so here's that:
- richard herring - 161
- johnny vegas - 156
- daisy may cooper - 148
- mawaan rizwan - 147
- katherine parkinson - 117
