2448: Taskmaster

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Freeview TV channel Dave is best known for being the home of endless repeats of BBC shows such as Top Gear, QI and Mock The Week, but in the last few years it’s been putting out some pretty solid original programming, too. Aside from the excellent Go 8-Bit, which I’ve talked about previously, there’s been an unscripted chat show fronted by Alan Davies, which made for surprisingly compelling viewing thanks to the candid conversations that unfolded; there’s currently a new series of Red Dwarf running which doesn’t appear to suck; and there’s a show I only discovered a few days ago called Taskmaster. It’s the latter I’d like to talk about today.

Taskmaster, one of several programmes on Dave that began as an Edinburgh Fringe production, is an unusual show in that it’s set up a bit like a panel show, only it’s the same “guests” each time over the course of a whole series, while the show is presented by Greg Davies playing an exaggerated version of himself, accompanied by the show’s creator Alex Horne playing a meek, sycophantic version of himself, a good foil to Davies’ mock arrogance. In the first series, which I’m currently watching, the lineup of guests includes Frank Skinner, Romesh Ranganathan, Tim Key, Roisin Conaty and Josh Widdicombe, who all happen to be some of my very favourite current comedians as well as regulars on the panel show circuit.

As the name suggests, Taskmaster revolves around tasks — specifically, Davies setting his guests a series of ridiculous challenges and then acting as omnipotent judge and jury over the results. The tasks are many and varied, including identifying the contents of a pie “without breaching the pie”, emptying an entire bath of water without pulling out the plug, producing a video that when played backwards appears to depict something incredible, and high-fiving a 55 year old member of the public as quickly as possible before the other contestants.

There’s a clear element of things being staged a bit — Key is usually set up to “cheat” in the challenges in one way or another, for example, while Ranganathan’s shtick is to get absolutely furious at him for breaking the rules — but this doesn’t hurt the show at all. Because the five guests represent such a broad spectrum of attitudes and approaches to comedy ranging from Skinner’s middle-aged calmness to Conaty’s energetic ditziness, the challenges can all unfold in a variety of ways. During a task in which the cast were challenged to eat as much watermelon as they could in a short amount of time, for example, Widdicombe thought things through before entering the room (and thus starting the clock) by finding a knife and spoon, then proceeding to very politely slice the melon then eat it a mouthful at a time, while Ranganathan simply picked up the melon and hurled it at the floor, shattering it into countless pieces which he then had to pick up from the floor and eat.

The challenges are frequently physical and slapstick, but never quite cross the line into “gross-out” territory; the closest it came to genuine unpleasantness was following Ranganathan’s melon-eating episode, where he ended up coughing a fair amount of it back up afterwards, but this wasn’t dwelled upon. Instead, the atmosphere is very much one of a group of friends setting silly tasks for one another, knowing full well that one of them is going to cheat, one of them isn’t going to be very good at it, one of them is a bit old for this shit and so on.

It’s been a real pleasant surprise to discover Taskmaster, and if you’re looking for something entertaining to watch I can highly recommend it, particularly if you’re a fan of Davies in full-on “Mr Gilbert” mode. You can watch it online here, though those outside the UK may need to dick around with VPNs and whatnot to convince the site that you’re a proud Brit.

2421: Go 8-Bit

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A new TV show launched on well-known Freeview channel Dave this evening: Dara O’Briain’s Go 8-Bit.

It’s a type of show we haven’t seen since the days of GamesMaster, only now everyone who used to watch GamesMaster is in their 30s and 40s and enjoys knob gags. Yes, it’s a show that focuses primarily on competitive computer game challenges.

A bit of cursory research reveals that it’s actually an adaptation of a live show also called simply Go 8-Bit, the creation of Steve McNeil and Sam Pamphilon, who take the role of regulars on the TV incarnation. O’Briain occupies the host’s chair, while McNeil and Pamphilon each have one special guest each — in the case of the first episode, topical comedian Susan Calman and England goalkeeper David James, both of whom are proud gamers in their own right. The cast is rounded out with the inclusion of journalist and podcaster Ellie Gibson, who has contributed to Eurogamer on numerous occasions in the past.

O’Briain is a natural fit for the show’s host, because his enjoyment of video games is well-documented, usually using this still-entertaining six year old clip from Live at the Apollo as evidence:

He’s proven himself to be a capable host of a variety of different shows over the past few years, ranging from the topical Mock the Week to the educational Science Club. His role on Go 8-Bit is, as you might expect, closer to the former than the latter, and for the historical and cultural context and significance of the games covered on each show, he defers to Gibson, who is the resident “expert” — she’s the show’s Richard Osmond to O’Briain’s Alexander Armstrong, for those who watch the surprisingly addictive Pointless.

The first episode featured a pleasingly diverse mix of titles, beginning with classic puzzler Tetris, continuing with Chuckie Egg, then on to Tekken, Star Wars Battlefront (the new one) and closing proceedings with a custom version of Bust-a-Move specifically created for the show, and for use with the custom Makey Makey controller, a kit which can turn anything which conducts electricity into a game or computer controller. Since their custom version of Bust-a-Move was entitled Bust-a-Moob, the custom peripherals attached to the Makey Makey were, as you might expect, human beings — specifically, an old man with an impressive beard sporting a questionable Dr. Robotnik cosplay; an old lady with an even more questionable Chun Li cosplay; a skinny, hairy dude in his pants forming a rough approximation of Zangief; and, um, a Cher impersonator.

The show made for genuinely enjoyable entertainment. The banter between O’Briain and the guests was amusing, and the trash-talk during the games was fun. It was also wise to focus the show around people who are enthusiastic about games but not necessarily good at them, too, because this made for some hilarious sights, such as an epic Tekken match largely decided by the old faithful sweep-kick to the shins move over and over and over again. There could be value in a show about e-sports professionals playing one another, of course, but it wouldn’t be Go 8-Bit; it would be an altogether more serious affair, and a scene that is already pretty well covered by the online streaming scene rather than television.

The show was, so far as I’m concerned, a resounding success: genuinely amusing, entertaining to watch, even for non-gamers, and just enough tidbits of gaming history to keep enthusiasts happy, too. And best of all, it wasn’t trying to be cool, young, dudebro or in any way hip — it understands that a significant chunk of the gaming audience these days is over 30, perhaps because most of the people involved with it are over 30.

It’s not, by any means, an in-depth documentary about the history of gaming, but it’s not trying to be — it’s simply a new format of show that, as I say, we haven’t really seen anything like since GamesMaster. The only thing I’d change, if anything, would be the slightly cringe-inducing big deal they make out of their rotating stage every time they spin it through 90 degrees so the players can face the game screen at the back of the stage, but that might just be me being a miserable old git.

That aside, it was a great show, and one that I look forward to tuning in to watch each week.

Go 8-Bit is on Dave on Thursday nights at 10pm UK time. You can find out more and watch the recently aired first episode here. (You may need to fiddle around with VPNs and whatnot if you’re watching from outside the UK.)

1615: As Yet Untitled

There was an interesting show on the TV channel Dave recently — yes, the Dave of my inexplicably popular Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave post — that was, conceptually, very simple but managed to work extremely well. The show in question was Alan Davies: As Yet Untitled, a peculiar take on the chat show that was supposedly completely unscripted and off-the-cuff.

Davies hosted the show, accompanied by four guests, usually from the world of comedy. And not the newer brand of comedy that I talked about a short while back; the kind of comedians I liked in my twenties and still like now. People like Bill Bailey, Kevin Eldon, Ross Noble — that sort of calibre of performer; contemporaries of Davies himself, I guess. Performers who, in their own comedy material, do a good job of speaking conversationally to the audience rather than relying on heavily scripted routines, skits or one-liners. One-liner-centric comics such as Milton Jones, who are often seen on panel shows alongside people like Bailey, Davies and Eldon, were conspicuous by their absence, since their form of wit isn’t really conducive to a flowing conversation.

And this is an important point, because that’s all the show was: a bunch of people sitting around a circular table, drink in hand, and having a conversation. And like any conversation between a group of friends, the topic meandered from one thing to another at a moment’s notice, with all the natural flow and surprising twists and turns of a real conversation. One moment they’d be talking about dieting methods; the next they’d be talking about whether or not you’d grab a magic floating poo if it appeared in the air before you. (Would you?)

The format — such as it was — worked really well, and it played to the strengths of its participants. Everyone involved seemed very relaxed and natural at all times, and this led to some convincing, free-flowing conversations that were entertaining to observe. The audience was acknowledged and involved without the participants playing up to them deliberately, and it really made me want to see more stuff like this — it couldn’t have been particularly expensive to produce, after all!

When I think about it, I guess all Davies and his team were doing with As Yet Untitled were applying good practices from another related medium — podcasting — to television. And it really worked well. Podcasts are often simply groups of people sitting around chewing the fat, usually on a particular topic but sometimes not even having that much focus — Kevin Smith’s podcast is a good example of this — and such was the case with As Yet Untitled. It was nothing more than a group of friends sitting around talking about whatever they felt like — and in the process it managed to feel infinitely more involving, interesting and entertaining than any number of overly manufactured, lavishly produced, completely false-seeming shows like The X-Factor, Britain’s Got Talent or My Dog Can Do This Thing With a Ball That is Quite Good. It was simple, raw, pure; it didn’t need to be anything more, and so it wasn’t.

More, please.

1550: Alpen Sponsors Characters on Dave

It’s been a while since I talked about how shit adverts are, so let’s talk about how shit adverts are. Or, more accurately, how shit those annoying “bumpers” or whatever they’re called before and after every ad break on a particular channel are.

I’m thinking of two specific examples here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good one, even thinking years back. Remember the annoying girls frantically scrabbling around with a hammer and a bowl of popcorn before Friends came on? I don’t think I can ever remember what that was fo– wait, Wella Experience, so I guess it did its job to a certain extent. Or did it? Annoying girls frantically scrabbling around with a hammer and a bowl of popcorn before Friends came on didn’t make me want to purchase any of Wella’s Experience products, whatever the hell they were. No; it made me irritable, and it made me fast-forward the moment the screen faded for the ads whenever I watched the episodes on video, which is how I typically ended up watching Friends.

The two specific examples I’m thinking of from 2014 are both from the channel Dave, it of the perpetual Top Gear, QI and Mock the Week reruns. The first is for Admiral multi-car insurance, and the second is for Alpen.

They’re both shit, and not just because they’re repetitive — although by God they’re both repetitive as fuck when they’re repeated a considerable number of times every evening — and they’re both shit for the same reason: they don’t make any sense whatsoever.

Take the Admiral ones. Here’s one. (Actually, these are a little different from the ones that air on TV, but these are the ones that Admiral has inexplicably chosen to upload to their YouTube account.)

And another.

They appear to be attempting to make a catchphrase out of “ooh, that’s primetime!” because, you see, they accompany “primetime” shows on Dave. Trouble is, that doesn’t make any sense. “That’s primetime!” isn’t something people say, and it’s not something you can force people to say. Not to mention the fact that the ads don’t have anything whatsoever to do with what they’re supposedly advertising — multi-car insurance. And no, saying the words “multi-car insurance!” during the advert when something completely incongruous is going on is not advertising multi-car insurance. Like the annoying Wella girls, these ads make me less inclined to ever make use of Admiral’s services.

Then comes Alpen, who have much the same problem. Alpen, as the campaign goes, sponsors “characters on Dave”, or in other words, the shows that are on in the mid-to-late evening and typically involve recognisable, well-known comedians.

A month or so ago, Alpen’s campaign made a reasonable amount of sense. There was a dude tramping around his alpine apartment eating porridge. Geoffrey Palmer said “porridge full of character”, then there was a close-up of the porridge. Fair enough.

Now, however, there’s a bearded bloke who waffles on some idiotic nonsense about what he thinks characters “are” (“Characters have eyes in the back of their head! Hello, mountains!” — he’s standing in front of a window with a view over some mountains), then Geoffrey Palmer says “Alpen sponsors characters on Dave” with a rather worn-out voice, as if he knows what he’s being asked to do is utterly stupid. And no porridge, full of character or no. (Unfortunately there’s no videos of these sequences easily available. Sort it out, YouTube!)

I just don’t understand why or how someone signed off on these. Both the Admiral and the Alpen ads are clearly supposed to be funny, but they’re also obviously composed by people who have absolutely no idea how to write comedy and thus have absolutely no business whatever writing comedy. Or attempting to, anyway.

Anyway, yes. That’s what I’ve been thinking about this evening. What a happy and exciting life I lead, no?

1366: Modern Life

I’m in a bit of a hurry tonight, so apologies if there’s any typos or bits that don’t quite make sense.

I’m in a bit of a hurry because in approximately 15 minutes’ time I’m going to be watching the one TV show on at present that I will actually watch when it’s broadcast — Dave Gorman’s Modern Life is Goodish.

I’m a fan of Dave Gorman’s comedy, and have been ever since I saw his show from a few years back where he travelled around trying to find all the other people called Dave Gorman in the world. He followed this up with Googlewhack Adventure which, besides teaching me what “Googlewhack” meant, was a similarly entertaining experience. And so far Modern Life is Goodish has been just as enjoyable.

Gorman’s comedy is fairly distinctive in that his shows are almost structured like a lecture, complete with Powerpoint presentations, visual aids and all manner of other things. He picks a topic and explains it in detail, taking great pains to provide evidence and proof for the things he’s saying, usually in the form of photographs or diagrams. He often lampoons himself, though, by launching into a detailed quasi-scientific explanation of something utterly ridiculous and pointless, yet treating it as seriously as if it were a lecture on, say, global warming, or Shakespeare’s influence on modern theatre or something.

Modern Life is Goodish has been particularly enjoyable to me as a lot of his observations are in line with things I think about the modern world. It’s always nice to have your own opinions (and irrational prejudices!) validated by someone else, and while I haven’t always found myself agreeing with everything Gorman says — particularly outside the context of his shows, such as on Twitter — I’ve found enough common ground in my limited experience of him to know that he’s someone that I like, and that I enjoy listening to.

The absolute highlight of Modern Life is Goodish, though, is his weekly “found poem” feature, in which he trawls comment sections of news stories from a topic he’s discussed throughout the rest of the show, then arranges them into, well, a found poem. Not only is this an enjoyable feature in its own right, it brings back incredibly fond memories of an English lesson back in secondary school where we were challenged to create our own found poem using only things we could see around the classroom. Our particular effort was an increasingly urgent exhortation to “Graham Coop” (actually someone we knew from a couple of years above us whose work happened to be displayed on the wall) to put out a fire in the classroom. (Pull out pin, Graham Coop!)

I’m not entirely sure why I remember that particular experience from school, but it’s one of those things that’s stuck with me for no apparent reason. Graham Coop wasn’t even a particularly good friend (though I did borrow Terminal Velocity from him at one point) and I haven’t spoken to a lot of those other people from school for a while; regardless, that particular experience has stuck with me, and I’m reminded of it every week when I watch Modern Life is Goodish.

I’ll leave you with a teaser from one of the early episodes. If you’re in the UK, you can find the most recent episodes on Dave’s website.