Taskmaster VR Releases on Meta Quest and SteamVR

Taskmaster is a BAFTA winning and International Emmy nominated comedy entertainment show originally 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.

159 episodes have been produced in the UK so far, as part of a landmark six season deal with Channel 4 in 2020, which has recently been renewed for a further six series by the broadcaster following nine record-breaking series on UKTV’s Dave.

Taskmaster has triumphed as one of Channel 4’s most popular programmes in recent years, coming in as the channel’s third most streamed title of year 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 [0-28days, 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 9pm slot.  Taskmaster is also hugely popular on Channel 4 streaming, where it is available for free and, since 2021, the average views per episode [0-7Days, O+O] have grown for the title with each series. Since the programme’s initial launch in 2015 on UKTV’s Dave, Taskmaster’s audience has grown by 80% from series one to series nine.

Taskmaster was crowned Best Comedy Entertainment Show at the National Comedy Awards 2022 and 2023, Best Comedy Entertainment at the BAFTAs 2020 and won 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 programme has been sold to 120 countries and aired on The CW in the U.S. in 2020.

Over 88 seasons and 881 episodes have been commissioned outside the UK with local versions now in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Nordics, Croatia and Portugal where it ranked first for most watched entertainment programs on its channel RTP 1.  Taskmaster Australia launched on Network Ten where it became the channel’s top new show of the year and received a nomination for Most Outstanding Comedy at the Logies, produced by Avalon Television with Kevin&Co and featuring Tom Gleeson as the Taskmaster with Tom Cashman as the Taskmaster’s Assistant, and and Taskmaster New Zealand series 5 will launch on TVNZ in 2024, while it won Best Entertainment Show at the NZ TV Awards. The first season of Le Maitre du Jeu for Bell Media, which aired in Canada in September 2022, increased Noovo's performance in the Thursday time slot by 50%, while the UK original won Canada’s film and TV Rockie Awards 2023 for best Comedy and Variety show. Taskmaster Canada is now in production for series 3.

The format has seen huge success in Europe, with the Swedish version reaching ratings of over a 50% market share in a primetime weekend slot on SVT and series 9 is in production for TV4, produced by Avalon Television with Baluba. Norway’s local version of Taskmaster, Kongen Befaler, won the Norwegian TV Academy Award (Gullruten) for Best Comedy Show in 2024, where a tenth season is in production for Discovery. Finland's version of Taskmaster, Suurmestari, won Game Show of the Year at the Venla Gaala awards, with a sixth series ordered by MTV3, with the channel also launching the first international version of Junior Taskmaster later this year. Stormester, Denmark's Taskmaster, which is now in its ninth series, won Best Game Show at the 2022 Vindere Awards, with TV2 launching successful Taskmaster spin off series, 'Champion of Champions' in 2023 and 'One More Chance'  2024, which achieved an incredible 82% share in the 15-34 demo.

The Taskmaster YouTube channel has seen huge success internationally, reaching over 9.8 billion impressions since it first launched in October 2019, with just over 736 million views and over 1.5 million subscribers, of which over a third are from North America. The channel has had over 168 million hours’ worth of content viewed with 54% of those hours from North America (85 million hours watched). The show has grown significantly in popularity with American audiences and over the last year there have been a total of 107 million views.

The Taskmaster book ‘200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People’ was published in 2018, while a second book ‘Bring Me The Head of the Taskmaster’ was published in September 2021 and combined they have sold 180,000 copies to date. Both books featured as Sunday Times Bestsellers at launch. The Swedish version of the book has sold 108,000 copies to date.

For the first time, Taskmaster is entering the world of virtual reality with the brand new upcoming virtual reality game, Taskmaster VR. Published by Scallywag Arcade, a Draw & Code studio, Taskmaster VR is set to launch in 2024 for Meta Quest 2 and 3.

The festive season saw the launch of brand-new Taskmaster Crackers which entirely sold out before they hit the shelves at pre-sale. Having currently sold over a quarter of a million crackers to fans across the world, production has gone into overdrive to meet phenomenal demand in time for Christmas. They are currently on sale and can be found on the Taskmaster Store as well as Amazon where they became an official No.1 best-seller and have been ordered by fans across 58 countries around the globe including in North America, Australia, Thailand, South Korea and Iceland among other countries.

A Taskmaster boardgame was released in Autumn 2019 and entirely sold out a week after it went on sale. It has sold over 250,000 copies to date along with an expansion pack. A second game, Taskmaster The Secret Series Game was released in 2022. Taskmaster The Card Game was released in September 2022 and has sold over 70,000 copies to date. All the games are available to buy from the official Taskmaster shop, www.TaskmasterStore.com.

Taskmaster Education takes elements of the show and uses them to inspire, engage and teach children and young people. Tasks can be adapted to meet a near infinite range of teacher objectives, whether curriculum-based or more focused on social and emotional development. Taskmaster Club launched in September 2023, offering schools across the country the opportunity to host after school clubs that bring Little Alex Horne and the silly joy of Taskmaster into their classrooms. Over 800 schools in the UK have registered to date on taskmastereducation.com.

Taskmaster is working with Homeless Link; the national membership charity for frontline homelessness services, creating a virtual Taskmaster at Home event with all the money raised going to homeless charities across the UK. Having raised over £125,000, more information on the virtual event can be found here.

The launch of series 13 also saw the unveiling of the brand new Taskmaster App; a show companion where viewers can watch the show on TV and score along at home, taking on the role of the mighty Taskmaster themselves. The app also features the Taskmaster Academy with quizzes from every series of the show, group and solo tasking games, and a Jukebox featuring all of the music from the show.