Random thing you love right now that doesn't deserve its own thread

So glad they’ve shortened the time between seasons. The waits could be pretty unbearable.

That Champion of Champions episode is phenomenal. Watched it this morning. Liza Tarbuck doesn’t disappoint.

The New Zealand Taskmaster seems to have that Taskmaster magic. The clips I’ve seen are a hoot.

The NZ taskmaster’s assistant is perfect. Down trodden and a little bewildered.

Celebrities do silly tasks for comedy effect. The ‘Taskmaster’ sets the tasks, there is an assistant who makes sure the contestants do the tasks.

That’s about it to be completely honest with you. It’s absolutely hilarious when it really works. The most joy tends to come when one of the contestants applies a little lateral thinking and runs away with the task because they’ve given it some thought.

The show also goes for the maximum comedy in a few situations. There's one with Nish Kumar that I'm thinking of specifically, where editing was put to good use, and another with Joe Wilkinson... Yeah, if you intend to watch, I don't want to spoil, but the show is good.

It's also not just the Taskmaster gives them tasks and they do them - a crucial piece is Greg Davies, the Taskmaster, critiquing and scoring their performances on each task. Some of the tasks are designed with strict rules where someone has to do something and they're ordered on how quickly they do it, which leaves little to no room for interpretation of the rules, but many are somewhat open ended. In those cases, Greg will decide who best, to his satisfaction and entertainment, completed the tasks.

Each episode opens with a "Prize task," where each contestant brings in an item which will end up as a prize for the winner of the episode that meets the criteria set out by Alex. Greg then judges those. The episode proceeds with multiple tasks filmed beforehand, usually at the Taskmaster house in London, but they also occasionally go on-location somewhere (my favorite task ever was filmed at what looked like a railroad museum). After they do the filmed tasks, they do a task in-studio to close out the episode. Whoever scored the most points that episode wins the prizes from the prize task at the beginning of the episode (not really - unless they're something the people genuinely don't care about giving up, they end up back with their original owners).

I know someone above complained about one of the contestants mostly disobeying the rules, but honestly, I relish when they find some kind of loophole, poor word choice, or otherwise, that lets them finish the task in an unintended way.

There are lots of other fun Easter eggs in Taskmaster that are best discovered yourself - ways they subvert expectations, things they do to contestants, etc.

They experimented with a task that interacts with the public in season 1, but Alex, the Assistant to the Taskmaster (actual creator of the show), said that the task was so uncomfortable to watch and participate in that they'd never do anything like that again.

This is beyond elevator pitch now, but I love the show. I am putting off rewatching old seasons as much as possible because I want to forget them as much as possible before I come back. I just recently started watching the New Zealand version.

I use the r/Taskmaster and r/Panelshow subreddits to uh... "keep up" with the show, if you know what I mean. Actually r/Taskmaster is 100% above board, it's mostly just news and clips. But the Official Taskmaster YouTube channel actually has several full seasons that are not region locked.

Oh, and there is a US version that was tried a number of years ago. Don't watch it. As usual, US TV execs don't know what they're doing. They butchered the format, shortened the show to a half hour, and completely miscast the role of Taskmaster. They also basically completely reused tasks from the UK version. Waste of time.

Max typed that post while naked.

Film at 11.

I told my brothers I made audio recordings of the fireworks on July 3, and sent them 20 messages containing recordings of farts. Immature, yes, but.. well..

Yes yes yes! Thank you Dave and glad you kept at it! Soon you'll have Irvine Welsh calling you for advice and a pint!

Your work is paying off.

Anybody in or near the Orange County, NY area, and enjoys wings.. there's a place called Clarke's in Blooming Grove that has the best wings I've ever eaten. Lots of meat, I ordered the garlic parmesan wings and.. good grief. Amazing. They make the wings at Buffalo Wild Wings seem like they are pigeon wings.

Were they your farts?

Lovely story, David! Really enjoyed it. It also reminded me that I need to read more Murderbot books.

Geez, even experienced posters have massive typos...