In the aftermath of another heroically fought tournament, Taskmaster Greg Davies and his sidekick Little Alex Horne are set to open the doors of the Taskmaster House to welcome a new quintet of contenders for the 9th series of the double BAFTA-nominated and Broadcast Award-winning UKTV Original series; Taskmaster, which returns to Dave in September.
Competing to win the Taskmaster’s golden likeness and the coveted title of ‘Taskmaster Series 9 Champion’ are: David Baddiel (Olivier Award nominated comedian, author, and presenter), Ed Gamble (comedian, BBC Two’s Mock The Week) regular and chart-topping podcaster with Off Menu), Jo Brand (comedian, writer and star of BAFTA-winning series BBC Four’s Getting On), Katy Wix (comedian and actress featuring in BBC One’s Ghosts, and Channel 4’s The Windsors), and Rose Matafeo (Edinburgh Comedy Award Winner 2018, comedian and writer, ITV’s Royal Variety Performance). Subjecting themselves to the Taskmaster’s characteristically unpredictable rulings and flippant scoring system, this band of hopefuls will be put through a relentlessly bizarre series of tasks spread over ten nail-biting episodes to determine the next Taskmaster Champion.
Produced by Avalon, the eighth series of the Dave show starring Iain Stirling, Joe Thomas, Lou Sanders, Paul Sinha and Sian Gibson is the most successful to date with an average of 1.7 million viewers per episode, increasing by 16% compared to the last series and remains the most watched show on UKTV Play with over 5.5 million views since January 2019*.
Taskmaster was crowned Best Entertainment Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2018. The series has been nominated for an International Emmy for Best Non-Scripted Entertainment, two BAFTA nominations for Best Comedy Entertainment Programme plus nominations at the RTS Awards, Broadcasting Press Guild Awards consecutively for the past four years. 2019 has seen nominations for Broadcast Digital Awards for Best Entertainment Programme and Best Gamechanger Programme, and two further nominations earlier this year at the Broadcast Awards 2019 for Best Entertainment Programme and Best Multichannel Programme.
The Taskmaster format has been sold into 17 countries including local versions of the show being developed for Comedy Central in the U.S. (starring Reggie Watts as the Taskmaster), TV 2 in Denmark, VTM in Belgium, TVE in Spain, and two series on Sweden’s SVT channel.
The launch of the Taskmaster Book 200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People was met with huge popularity, sold over 60K copies following publication, and swiftly rose to join top 20 bestselling hardback books in the UK four days after its release during the competitive Autumn/Winter sales period. A paperback version will be released on 5th September, while a Taskmasterboardgame is set to be released in Autumn this year.
The ninth series of Taskmaster will air on Dave in September, catch up on series 1-8 on UKTV Play - http://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk
