Jake’s Take Special Edition #14: Taskmaster’s Greg Davies and Alex Horne Visit!

It is a privilege to welcome Taskmaster presenters Greg Davies and Alex Horne to a special edition of The Jake’s Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast.

Taskmaster is a BAFTA-winning and International Emmy-nominated comedy entertainment show initially created by Alex Horne. Greg Davies stars as the all-powerful “Taskmaster” who, with the help of his loyal assistant Horne, sets out to test the wiles, wit, and wisdom of five comedians through a series of strange and surreal challenges in what is the most hard-fought and ridiculous comedy entertainment format on TV. So far, 170 episodes have been produced in the UK as part of a landmark six-season deal with Channel 4 in 2020. The broadcaster recently renewed the agreement for six more series following nine record-breaking series on UKTV’s Dave.

Taskmaster has triumphed as one of Channel 4’s most popular programs in recent years, coming in as the channel’s third most streamed title of 2023 with 2.3 billion viewing minutes recorded across all series watched in the year. The launch episode of the latest series [S17] averaged an audience of 3.2m, with 40% of viewing coming from streaming [0-28 days, all platforms].

Watched by a broad multi-generational audience, Taskmaster was Channel 4’s youngest skewing series last year, and in terms of audience share of young viewers (16-34) across last year’s series on the channel, it was second only to Gogglebox in the coveted 9 pm slot. Taskmaster was recently crowned Best Comedy Entertainment at the Rose d’Or Awards 2024 and has previously won Best Comedy Entertainment Show at the National Comedy Awards 2022 and 2023, Best Comedy Entertainment at the BAFTAs 2020, and Best Entertainment Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2018, having previously received two more nominations for the Broadcast Awards and recently picking up its fourth BAFTA nomination for the 2023 ceremony.

It has also been nominated for the Bruce Forsyth Entertainment Award at the NTA’s 2021 and 2022, Best Comedy Entertainment at Rose d’Or 2023, Studio Entertainment at Rose d'Or 2021, Best Entertainment Programme at the RTS Awards, Broadcasting Press Guild Awards, the Broadcast Digital Awards, Edinburgh TV Award, the TV Choice Awards, and Best Returning Format in the International Format Awards 2020. The original Taskmaster program can now be seen in 120 countries. Over 92 seasons and 921 episodes have been commissioned outside the UK, with local versions now in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Croatia, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Portugal, where it ranked first for most-watched entertainment programs on its channel RTP 1.

The Taskmaster YouTube channel has been hugely successful internationally, reaching over 10.9 billion impressions since its first launch in October 2019. It has just over 870 million views and over 1.6 million subscribers, of which over a third are from North America. The channel has had over 196 million hours of content viewed, with 56% of those hours from North America (108 million hours watched). The show has grown significantly in popularity with American audiences, and over the last year, there have been 123 million views.

On this special edition of The Jake’s Take with Jacob Elyachar Podcast, Greg Davies and Alex Horne spoke about Taskmaster’s tenth anniversary on television, previewed the Series 19 opener, and why they brought the series to the United States.

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