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[thebigrewatch]

TASKMASTER : SERIES 1 : EPISODE 3 : The Poet and The Egg

Hello all, same day, just had lunch and more choccy buttons so I'm ready to crack on with another episode. And that was a good pun from me because this episode is called The Poet and The Egg!

I can't really remember this episode at all so it'll be good to look back on it. I've got a meeting in an hour so let's get to it.

I don't understand why Greg stands up to introduce everyone, it's a bit odd.

Prize Task: Most Meaningful Item

Tim Key has brought in a piston. He explains it to say he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award and he kept this piston which was part of his show when he won it. We also get a good bit of chat here about Greg booping Romesh on the nose which continues throughout the episode as I recall.

Romesh has brought in his wedding ring. So it's high stakes! Something's telling me he's not getting that back.

Roisin has brought in a dictionary. This is the first instance of someone bringing something like this in.

Josh brings in a lovely item which is a self-published book from his father, a string of angry letters he wrote in the past. He describes it as a 'slice of life'.

Frank brings in his child's hobby horse which is very sweet. Roisin comes in last place, then Josh, Tim, Frank and Romesh. I think that's a fair assessment! Task 1: Throw a teabag into a mug from the furthest distance. Frank already confident, saying he played cricket in this youth. He points out straight away you need wet tea bags. Roisin only brings one bag out then realises it needs to be wet. Romesh on the other hands spends a long time with dry teabags. Frank gets a box out to try and make a sort of funnel for the teabag to go into which is a great system. This leads to a great discussion about whether a box was available for Romesh or not. In another task further down the line they see a box in the background while they're showing Josh's efforts and they say 'box!' so funny.

Josh goes down a strange route of using a wheelbarrow as a mug for tea. He drinks out of it, it looks pretty disgusting!

Tim has the same idea as Frank I guess but makes it far too complicated by involving one of those things people use to throw tennis balls for dogs, and putting the teabag inside a tennis ball. I don't think it's quite in the spirit of things but it does the job.

Task 2: Oh I like this task - they have to draw a picture by walking, kind of like a human etch a sketch. The weather for everyone is nice...except Tim who is doing it in absolute horrendous torrential rain. Josh does a lovely little flower. Roisin wants to draw a sausage for Greg! But it sort of ends up looking like a golf bag.

One thing I will say is I love the music over Tim's one. He tries to draw a key but then crosses it out and ends up with sort of nothing. Tim describes it as the worst hour of his life.

Romesh does a great one of his own head which looks amazing!

Frank does a hobby horse but it doesn't look very good.

Task 3: Buy the best present for the Taskmaster, here is £20, you have 10 weeks.

This is another great moment. I mean the others aren't even worth talking about really but I'll go through them and get to Josh.

Tim - book tokens

Frank - see behind me glasses, these are quite cool actually, he puts them on and can see behind himself

Romesh has a brilliant picture made...I'll let it speak for itself! He says it's to show Greg is 'all terrain'

Josh goes next but I think it's too good to leave here so I'll skip to Roisin's and come back to Josh.

Roisin gets Greg a mouse!

Josh gets Greg a tattoo with his name on his foot! The reaction from Greg and the audience is priceless.

I don't really know why they left Roisin until last because it comes in a bit flat after this excitement but there we are. There is a fun bit though where Roisin says the mouse is called Greg and Josh quips back 'I've got a tattoo of his name!' Of course Josh had to win this one.

Task 3: Using only the items currently on this table, get this egg as high as possible. The egg must not break.

Tim says the phrase 'another day another egg' which I enjoyed. The thing about eggs is they are designed not to break on grass so that's a good call.

Romesh does a lot of titting about with the paper and measuring tape before piling it all up and putting the egg on top.

Roisin throws it up and tries to catch it but it of course goes badly wrong and falls to the floor and cracks.

Tim tries to make a sort of olympic torch out of the paper but it falls off and smashes on the floor.

Josh and Frank have a similar idea of wrapping the egg in paper and throwing it. Josh tries to cover the floor with scrunched paper to cushion the fall but it doesn't quite land in it, however it doesn't break because they are naturally robust against falling on grass.

Frank's egg comes down and nearly knocks him out! Sadly it does break :( So Josh is first and Romesh is second.

Live task: Stand up after 100 seconds. This is your typical not great live task, just waiting for 100 seconds to arrive is a bit dull. One thing I did enjoy was, after all the box chat with Romesh, Alex gives him a box while he's sitting there waiting for the 100 seconds.

Roisin goes, then Josh, then Tim and Romesh at the same time and then Frank goes. Closest to 100 seconds was Josh at 105 seconds. Well that's it then, and it's a tie break situation!

Josh and Romesh have to give Frank Skinner's age in minutes which ends up being about 30 million and something or other (numbers aren't my friend). Josh ends up being the closest to this so he wins and Romesh loses his wedding ring!

[thebigrewatch]

TASKMASTER : SERIES 1 : EPISODE 2 : The Pie Whisperer

I'm back folks and ready for another viewing of Taskmaster. This time it's series 1, episode 2 and it features my favourite episode name, The Pie Whisperer. I like pies, I like whispering, what's not to love about it all? Anyway, my boss is away today so I'm doing this instead of working. I've had some breakfast which included a giant chocolate orange button from M&S (a bad habit I've got into recently) so I'm ready to roll! I still find it unnerving that they do a sort of comedy dig at the contestants when they introduce them because they don't do that going forwards. I'm glad because it does make it more of a panel show vibe and that's now what TM is about. Prize Task: Most Impressive Item.

Tim Key goes first this time and brings in his London Marathon medal from 2009.

Romesh brings in an Arsenal cap that was thrown from the tour bus after the 2001/2002 win. Romesh says he doesn't know which player it came from and Josh says that someone could have thrown it from the other side of the bus which is a fair point! Now we know with hindsight that football things do not go down well with Greg so he's not to fussed about this prize. Greg goes so far as to say when he's King football will be banned! You'd think future contestants would learn from this but there's always someone that brings a football item.

Roisin next and she does a classic Roisin and brings in a massive bottle of champagne! Romesh goes into a hilarious tirade about Roisin being an alcoholic and how we shouldn't be celebrating that.

Josh's prize elicits a gasp from the audience because he brings in the trophy he won on the TV quiz show Pointless. Everyone loves a bit of Pointless so you can see why that would be great. Great bit of back and forth with Greg, Josh and Romesh: Romesh: The whole set up for that is just so that we know that Josh won Pointless...

Josh: No!

Romesh: ...that's the whole reason he put that up there.

Greg: Is that because your hat has been rather downgraded in the last 10 minutes? I imagine, Josh, when you were on Pointless all the money you won went to charity, didn't it?

Josh: Correct.

Romesh: *looks absolute daggers*

A great moment. Anyway, on to Frank's prize offering. He's such a great man, he's brought in a leather hat that you get out of a Christmas cracker because he says it's the only style of hat that looks good on him. He says you can't wear a paper cracker hat all year round because 'the seam is unreliable'. Brilliant. And again we bring it back to Romesh by Greg saying he's impressed by Frank's hat but 'if only you'd tossed it over a bus' like Romesh's Arsenal hat.

Tim Key wins, then Frank's hat, then the champagne, then the Pointless trophy and then of course the Arsenal hat. Bit gutted about the Pointless trophy as that was the only one that got a reaction from the audience.

Task 1: High Five a 55 year old, fastest wins, your time starts now. Oh this is a cracker of a task. So cringe getting them to speak to members of the public in a shopping centre. It's interesting to see what they're like, the awkwardness of having to ask people their age. And we're in for yet more Tim Key shenanigans!

Frank starts off by trying to bring a member of the public into his predicament by saying 'I'm looking for a 55 year old, what do they look like?' just desperately trying to get some help from them. Frank decides to high five people of different ages and see if he's allowed to add them up, he gets enough people but needs a one year old. He looks behind him and there's someone pushing a buggy so he goes running after it. Brilliant editing.

Romesh makes a sign to say he'll give someone £20 if they high five him. After this point he remains almost motionless because I think he thinks that the sign will lure the 55 year olds in, but alas it does not. He manages to pay a 50 year old for a high five after an hour.

Tim Key looks so hilariously ridiculous in his outfit here. It's alright if he's in the house but when he's in a shopping centre he just looks ridiculous, it' brilliant! He's so awkward here, it's almost unbearable to watch. In the end he says he's filming something for Comic Relief and he needs to high five a 55 year old. Cue much discussion from the group! They agree Tim needs to give some money to charity in order to absolve himself. He starts trying to negotiate with Greg to ask how much he'd have to pay to go to 1st place! Task 2: Identify the contents of the pies, you may touch the pies but you may not breach their pastry.

Frank goes first, he is quite quick and took a psychic approach to the pies, just looked at them and said what they might be. This is where the title of the show comes from as he's described as the Pie Whisperer. We get to see the pies opened now to see what's in them:

A picture of the taskmaster, a regular steak pie, frozen peas, toothpaste and marbles (not easy to pick up with a knife and fork).

Romesh and Josh were grouped together. They try smelling and they both see the pies have had the bottoms cut out of them and can see bits and pieces through them so they get some good guesses. Then comes a hilarious discussion, as illustrated by the gif, where Roisin says that they both breached the pies with their eyes! We see later that the pies collapsed for a lot of them so they actually were able to see what was in them.

Next up it's Tim and Roisin. They both ask Alex to breach the pastry for them, but Roisin adds another element of difficulty by looking away while he breaches the pies and looking back to see his reaction to eating them. Tim's reaction when he sees the marbles in the pie is brilliant. Alex eating the toothpaste pie is something I'll never get out of my mind.

Frank has a hilarious moment trying to guess the hot toothpaste pie:

Milk pie

Yoghurt Pie

Extra Strong Mint Pie

Minty Tippex Pie

The final pre-recorded task: Do something that will look impressive in reverse.

NOW. This bring us an iconic TM moment. Romesh and Tree Wizard.

But first we see Josh who is pulling a van while he's lying on a skateboard. Obviously he was being pulled along by the van. Alex says that Josh said that was the most exciting thing he'd ever done.

Tim Key - his is quite dull, he does a jigsaw, but it was cinematically quite nice to watch with the Bond style music.

Frank...well, bless his little heart. His is called 'Push Up and Away' and he basically stands up from lying down without bending his knees.

Roisin's is quite beautiful even though she is essentially just spitting water out of her mouth, but it's got melancholy piano music and it's in black and white so it looked great. And now onto Romesh. TREE WIZARD BACK FROM THE DEAD TO CREATE SOME BALLOONS

It's just brilliant. He's got the balloons there and he's unpopping them, but the song is fantastic. And genuinely it's something that goes round in my head a lot! Roisin and Romesh become joint winners. I thought Romesh should have got the full win but on the re watch I think they both deserved it.

Now we're onto the live tasks. I don't usually like the live tasks because they tend to be a bit of a car crash but let's see what we've got now. They're all shackled to a bench and they've got to crack the code to get themselves out. The clue is it's Alex's weight and Greg's weight. Roisin manages to get herself out first, then Romesh, followed by Josh, Tim and lastly Frank.

Roisin is the winner of the episode and she gets the Pointless trophy! I thought it was a great episode again, I mean they all are really so it's silly me saying that every time but I enjoyed it a lot.

[thebigrewatch]

+

"Brave boys."

[thebigrewatch]

[ID: Five screencaps from Taskmaster. Greg Davies asks, “Tim Key, what did you bring in?” Tim says, “Reindeer skull,” presenting a mounted deer skull with antlers. The audience laughs. Greg says, “That, my friends, is how to play this game.” End ID.]

[thebigrewatch]

[ID: Two screencaps of Frank Skinner on Taskmaster, presenting a pair of small, ornate scissors. He says, “Um, I have brought in a pair of grape scissors. And yes, they have grapes on their shaft.” End ID.]

[thebigrewatch]

Taskmaster : Series 1 : Episode 1 : Melon Buffet

Right, here we are then. The first series rewatch. I've been watching Taskmaster for a long time after happening upon one of the series 1 episodes on Dave. Having seen every episode of Taskmaster it feels strange to go back to the beginning. The vibe is weird! They all look so young as well. I can't get over Alex's hair and beard.

Anyway, I thought since it's the first episode I'd write down some of my favourites from the series and then I can see if I still stand by it when I've rewatched them all.

Favourite prize task: Most unusual item, for the response it gets from Josh Favourite contestant: Romesh Ranganathan Favourite task: Guess the content of the pies Favourite team task: get to 11 points, fastest wins Favourite live task: the one where they have to pop up a tent, get into the tent, put on a onesie and get out of the tent Favourite episode name: The Pie Whisperer Favourite moment: When Romesh argues there was no box for his task and Frank shouts 'box' when the box is shown in the next scene

Right then, I've popped the episode on, I've got a slice of blueberry orange cake and a cup of tea...let's goooo! Oh no wait it's making me watch an advert. Hang on. Alright, let's gooooo! Oh wow, Greg looks so young. No beard or glasses or anything. Very quickly highlighting Frank Skinner as the older contestant because he's wearing a suit. They don't keep up with these sort of insult introductions in the future. I'm glad, they can get a bit wearing after a while (looking at you cats does countdown). Prize task: Most Unusual Item : Frank has brought in some grape scissors which look nice. Josh brought in a football that was supposed to be signed but in the picture it doesn't have any signatures on. They don't dwell on this though! I feel like if it was a future series they would have investigated that a bit more. Roisin brought in a photo of Greg sitting on a bench. Romesh brought in a Christmas snow globe with the faces of his children photoshopped onto the little santas which is rather sweet. Tim Key brought in a reindeer skull which is quickly chosen as the winner. The football comes last, with Josh exclaiming 'I brought in a signed football, you've rubbed off the signatures and put me last!'

First Task: In the lab there is a watermelon, eat as much watermelon as possible in 1 minute : This task truly shows the difference between human beings! We see Josh first, who brings out the cutlery to spoon the watermelon into his mouth. He ate 218g which is respectable, that's more that I'd manage for sure! Next we see Frank who bashes it on the corner of the table which gains a round of applause from the audience. He makes a joke that he forgot his watermelon scissors, a throwback to the grape scissors from the prize task. Roisin makes a very poor but hilarious attempt. She walks into the lab and goes 'oh!' and walks out again to get something to cut the melon open with. She only gets a spoonful in her mouth before the whistle goes, in her words 'I just grazed it'. She is the one who says the episode title 'Melon Buffet'. And now we see Tim and Romesh. The animals! Tim bashes it wildly on the table to break it open, but Romesh burst into the lab, grabs it and throws it down hard onto the floor where it is absolutely obliterated! They both eat some much they have a slight vomiting issue. Tim isn't too bad but we do see Romesh vomiting his watermelon back up which isn't a pretty sight! Very funny line from Romesh here though 'I think I produced more melon than I ate'. It is revealed controversially that Tim ate a bit more after the whistle went, and it's not the first time we'll see him cheating a bit. Overall Romesh is the winner of the task! I should hope so too after all he went through!

The next task is one of those tasks that would not be funny unless one person does it differently. Thank goodness for Roisin! The contestants are asked to paint a horse while riding a horse. They all give it a good go but it's not that thrilling. Greg marks the pictures before we see who painted them, a bit like the technical challenge on bake off. I did enjoy Tim Key telling the horse to 'shut up' every time it made a noise. Roisin refuses to go on the horse so she does it on the training horse instead. I think she's unfairly judged here because she is still on a horse and it is moving, but obviously it's not as difficult as those that were on a real horse. She's put in last place though which is fairer than being disqualified. Frank's painting is lovely and he is the winner of the task!

The final pre-recorded task is another great silly one. They have to completely empty a bath tub without disturbing the plug. The bathtub is well used throughout TM history so it's nice to see its first outing again. Josh and Frank have the same idea to siphon off the water before quickly realising that is not going to work and choosing a bucket instead. They seem to be doing it quite slowly and carefully. If it was me I'd do what Tim Key does, we'll get to that in a moment. Roisin quickly falls into the usual TM traps of choosing a bucket with holes in. She very slowly uses a large saucepan to get the water out but doesn't completely empty it. Then there's our two animals again. Romesh uses a large bucket to get the water out but has more urgency than the others, so much so the water goes over the camera! Tim Key gets into the bath and starts thrashing around which is 100% what I would have done! However, we see that in his haste he's knocked the plug out and sneakily tries to put it back in. Greg asks the audience to give Tim Key and extra round of applause before we find out about the cheating which makes the reveal even better!

After that controversy is over with it's onto the live task where the contestants need to pop up a tent, go into the tent, put on a onesie and get out of the tent wearing said onesie. There isn't much to say about this really other than it's hilarious seeing Josh emerge dishevelled from his tent wearing a pink cow onesie!

I'd forgotten that there's a tie break task in the first episode, we don't see many of these. Frank and Romesh have to find Alex who was somewhere on the TM grounds. Frank wins and is therefore the winner of the episode. I'm sure he's glad to get his grape scissors back.

Overall I thought it was a really good opening episode and they chose some brilliant tasks to set the tone of the series, especially the melon one. Just brilliant.