In a field somewhere in New Zealand, comedian Julia Morris is darting around a caravan, desperately looking for a way in. Her goal: to rescue a balloon floating inside, without touching the vehicle itself. Besuited and armed with a clipboard and whistle, fellow comedian Tom Cashman is standing nearby, with an eagle eye on Morris. “I feel like I need a gun,” Morris says to Cashman who, to his credit, only looks mildly alarmed. Morris settles on a technique: attempting to scooch inside the caravan in a wicker basket. It promptly breaks under her bum.
Welcome to Taskmaster Australia, a spin-off of the hit British gameshow that sees five comics competing in elaborately pointless tasks. The original show, now in its 15th season, is hosted by comedians Greg Davies and Alex Horne. Davies, the titular taskmaster, watches clips of the contestants completing their quests in front of a live audience, then gleefully bullies them for their efforts. His assistant Horne, who is also the show’s creator, plays a subservient butler-figure and referee.
Much of the fun of Taskmaster comes from the contestants’ panic as they tackle what is frequently a silly assignment: fill an egg cup with their own tears, paint a picture of a horse while riding a horse or conceal a pineapple on their person. Often, the tasks reveal something about the competitors themselves – how creative they are, how good they are at teamwork or how they handle stress. There are some flashes of brilliance and cunning but as Horne tells me: “Comedians are rarely cleverer than you’d think.”
A global hit, the show now has versions in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Spain, Finland, Croatia, Belgium, Portugal, Canada and New Zealand. The Australian series sticks closely to the original’s format, down to theme song, presence of caravan and the casting of its hosts, comedians Tom Gleeson and Cashman, who are perfectly suited to playing bully and butler. Speaking to them together, it is quickly decided Gleeson will be known as Tom One and Cashman Tom Two – not Better Tom and Lesser Tom, as Gleeson demands and Cashman sweetly immediately accepts.
“When I call you Lesser Tom, just to be clear – it’s about talent and profile. It’s nothing personal,” Gleeson says to Cashman.
Gleeson, already the host of gameshow Hard Quiz, happily admits his love of bullying comedians on telly. Cashman, whose first job as a teenager was as a basketball referee, is, by his own description, naturally “very annoying about rules”.
“It’s something that I’ve had to suppress about my personality to fit in social circles my whole life,” he says. “It feels like someone has finally told me, ‘No, we want you to be as annoying as you are in your heart’.”
Both Toms seem genuinely amazed by how enthusiastic Australian audiences already are about the show. “I’ve never done a show that right from the very first episode, all the audience seats were sold out,” Gleeson says. “It feels a little bit like we were given the keys to a Ferrari that someone else had built and we just sat in it and drove it. Often when you host a big TV show, usually there’s an element of stress or responsibility. But this just felt like a fun Sunday drive – in a Ferrari built by Alex Horne.”
Cashman, who has seen friends compete on the UK version, remembers a time when most comedians considered an HBO special their career zenith. “But some time around 2010, suddenly all British comedians wanted to do was go on some show where they have to balance an egg on their head or say the alphabet backwards,” he says. “And now everyone does.”
They are both suspicious of how attentive their friends have suddenly become. “Comedians have no interest in being on Hard Quiz at all,” Gleeson says. “But oh my god – Taskmaster! I have had so many text messages from people who are just so happy for me that I’m hosting it.”
“I have noticed an uptick in how kind people are to me,” Cashman adds.
The Australian show’s first five contestants – Jimmy Rees, Luke McGregor, Nina Oyama, Danielle Walker and Morris – are facing entirely new tasks, which stops them cheating by watching other versions of the show.
“It’s a great and fun challenge to come up with new tasks,” Taskmaster Australia producer Cam Bakker, who helps develop them, tells me. “I think it’s much more rewarding for the Australian audience to know these are tasks created with them in mind.”
Take the balloon in the caravan. “On paper it’s a very straightforward task, but there are so many other considerations that are workshopped both beforehand and on the day,” Bakker says. “Where should the starting position of the balloon be? Should it be filled with air or helium? Should the caravan windows be open or closed?”
Horne likens the art of writing a task to setting up a joke: the comedians who tackle them are writing the punch lines. “That’s why we can only test the tasks out beforehand so much – you can’t predict the warped mind of a comic,” he says.
The only country where a local version of Taskmaster has not succeeded is the US, where it was cancelled after one season. For some reason, the decision was made to include actors among the contestants, who are perhaps less naturally inclined to look ridiculous on television than standups. These days, Horne maintains a firm grip on the international spin-offs; all of the tasks on the Australian show were sent to him for his notes and approval.
“I was very frustrated to admit that I did indeed love a lot of them,” Horne says. “I thought I was the only one who could do this thing. If people find out others can also do it, I may well be in deep trouble, career-wise.” He is even considering reusing some of the Australian tasks on the British show. “UK comedians are far too lazy to watch the Australian version, so we should be safe.”
“So this is an encouragement for any UK comedians … to tune into the Australian version,” Cashman says with a giggle.
“Get a VPN and watch Channel 10.” Gleeson says. “Learn how to put up with really long ad breaks.”
It must be more fun to have Cashman’s role, I say, because he gets to see all the stress of the task being completed live. “It’s a bit strange that you think it is a fun job to sit and watch a comedian make the funniest type of cake at 7.30 in the morning,” he replies. But Cashman admits that he does enjoy watching the contestants get stressed. “I enjoyed the power dynamic – it is like being in some sort of psychological experiment. You’re seeing their problem solving, which is why the show is so fun – you see how their brains work.”
However, filming can mean 10-hour days, during which Cashman must continually watch the contestants getting increasingly stressed about, say, juicing oranges without using their hands. Gleeson, who “just has to turn up to the studio and rag on everyone”, is appalled to hear this. “What the fuck? Why did you say yes to this gig, Lesser Tom?”
Both share one regret about hosting Taskmaster Australia: neither of them can compete in it. “When someone has to throw an egg into a bucket from the furthest distance, in my head I am always going, ‘I could do a better job than this person’,” Cashman says. “I wish there was time after for me to have a crack.”
“I will never be able to prove it, but I suspect I’d be better at completing the tasks than every contestant we’re ever going to have on the show,” Gleeson says with a sigh. “I am better than everyone in the UK version too, including Greg Davies. I am better than Greg Davies – make that the headline!”
“If you need a second headline,” Cashman adds, “please write that Lesser Tom has a lot of respect for Alex Horne and he is clearly better in every way.”
• This article was amended on 2 February 2023. The sequence referenced in the opening paragraph was filmed in New Zealand, not New South Wales, Australia, as a previous version said.
Taskmaster Australia starts on Thursday at 7.30pm on Channel 10
