How minds get melted on Taskmaster NZ
Who's making Taskmaster NZ contestants do all those insane things? I tried to find out. Plus, I break down that incredible trailer for Succession's third season...
It’s the comedians who get the biggest laughs on the New Zealand version of Taskmaster, the second season of which started on TVNZ 2 last night. But the show’s behind-the-scenes talent is just as crucial to its success. I wanted to find out find out what makes task masters Sam Smith and Paul Williams tick. So I asked them to reveal their secrets. They were cagey, but eventually I eked out some details…
Sam Smith dreams them up while he's riding the bus around Auckland. He's got the Notes app on his phone, and even though he's finished working on the current season of Taskmaster NZ, he can't stop himself. He still writes ideas down. It's his job, and the tasks just keep coming to him.
Recently, he's been inspired by a camping trip, and his former job as a dentist. “It can literally be anything,” he says. “I'm putting ideas in for season three.”
Paul Williams, Smith's task co-writer who doubles as the show's official on-air “task master”, goes one further. He dreams them up, literally, while he's asleep. This happened to him recently, with less than impressive results.
“I woke up, wrote it down, then fell back asleep,” he says. “When I woke up, I was like, ‘That's awful.’” Bad idea it may be, yet it still might make it into the show. “The core mechanic needs tweaking, but we might still use it,” says Williams.
Welcome to the weird world of task writing for Taskmaster NZ. The hit comedy panel show, based on a long-running series dreamed up by British comic Alex Horne, returns to TVNZ 2 on Wednesday for its second season.
In it, five comedians undertake ridiculous, mundane, complicated, senseless or insane challenges. These are filmed, then played for laughs in front of a live studio audience. The comics are then judged, and often ridiculed, by host Jeremy Wells.
The show lives or dies on the strength of its tasks, dozens of which are written well before this season's contestants - radio host Matt Heath, with comics Guy Montgomery, Urzila Carlson, David Correos and Laura Daniel - get their hands on them.
“It all starts in these two brains,” jokes Smith. “We should get all the credit for it.”
Hunkered down in a Kingsland studio, Smith and Williams spent four weeks on the show's pre-production earlier this year. “I got a call on Thursday, and they said, ‘Can you start working on Monday for a month?’” says Smith. Williams had been turning jobs away, hoping a second season would be green lit. “We were straight into it.”
The two of them spent that time batting around ideas for tasks, pulling inspiration for their everyday lives, trying out different things themselves and putting unwitting bystanders to the test. “We can be like, ‘Hey, can you get us as many jaffas as you can possibly get? Can you just get us some scotch?’” says Smith.
When Auckland went into lockdown in February, the pair started working over Zoom. That sparked another flurry of ideas. “We'd have a bathroom break and come back and all the ideas would be bathroom-based ideas,” admits Williams. “Like, ‘What about toilet paper?’”
Task masters abide by strict rules: tasks can't be repeated from the previous season, and they can't be copied from overseas versions of the show, including the long-running British original. Williams has contact details for Horne, the show's “god”, in his phone if he needs to check anything.
But the British version has been running for 11 seasons, which can make life difficult. Smith has seen all of them, and considers himself a superfan. Yet even he was very nearly caught out recently.
“They had a task perfectly word-for-word which is one of the tasks we were about to start filming,” says Smith. It asked contestants to: ‘Make this house haunted.’ “We were really excited about that. I saw it on TV and said, ‘Shit, we need to cut this one.’”
Often, there are other problems. Sometimes, the contestants don't understand the task. That happened in season one when they were asked a trick question, to “make the tastiest desert”. It was mis-read by the first four contestants. One by one, each mis-read it as “dessert” and piled up sugary treats instead of making a food-based “desert”.
“It was unreal filming it,” says Williams. “Everyone else was piling up dessert, making a big old mess.” Finally, Brynley Stent came in. She initially mis-read the task too. That meant it couldn’t make it to air, and they'd wasted their time.
“Then, about halfway through, she re-read it. I was like, chills,” says Williams. “It went from being cut to, ‘Oh my god - she got it.’” It became one of the season's best moments.
This time around, contestants know what they're in for. Unlike season one, Smith says they all did their research. “I walked in on David Correos Googling, ‘How to be a good contestant on Taskmaster,’” he says. “The cast this year are the five most competitive people I've ever seen in anything in my life.”
They're also talking up a major rivalry on the show, some rogue-ish Back of the Y moments from expert TV DIY-er Heath, and the antics of the apparently infinitely entertaining Correos. “The day I was there, he was always, after starting each task, immediately out of breath,” says Smith. Williams agrees: “He's at 100 per cent speed, and 100 per cent effort.”
So what makes a good task? “The thing we aim for is variability,” says Smith, who does double duties as the crowd warm-up comic for live tapings. “There are some that are very simple one word tasks. They give everyone lots to do, they can take it anywhere they like. Then there are also ones that you're aiming for a specific result. There's an answer to it that they're trying to decipher.”
In season two, things get physical. One task involves asking contestants to knock down a set of bowling pins set up on grass 25 metres away from a caravan. Contestants can't leave the caravan, and are given a single bowling ball. “You want to hang the carrot close enough so they can kind of get it,” says Smith. “It's gettable, but really hard.”
Smith and Williams are protective of their tasks too. In this interview, they refused to reveal any of season two's tasks without express permission from a TVNZ minder. On set, they gave each task a nickname, like, “Toothpaste,” or “Attenborough,” so contestants couldn't predict what they were if they were written down on a call sheet.
Their tasks also needed to make it through the show's producers. They don't always share Smith and William's enthusiasm. “Sometimes you'll pitch it and no one else is excited,” says Williams. “You never know how they're going to go.”
When it goes right, tasks can fly - quite literally. In the first episode of season two, contestants face a one-word challenge that just says: ‘Fly.’ That idea came from Williams' girlfriend. “That's it. It's totally up to them how they interpret that,” says Williams. The results, says Smith, “are phenomenal”.
It's moments like that that make Williams and Smith agree on one thing: they love their job. “This is a great job,” says Smith. “I just find it so fun,” agrees Williams. “There was one day, we were there doing this bizarre, physical thing in the office. I forgot we were working. I was like, ‘What is this job?’”
This story first appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
Let’s discuss this fucking fantastic Succession trailer…
Inject all of this into my eyeballs immediately…
It’s the bit when power-loon Tom Wambsgans tells his equally gormless sidekick Cousin Greg that Logan Roy is “going to fire a million poisonous spiders down your dicky” like it’s an actual, real, physical, immediate threat.
No, wait. It’s the bit when Logan sneers into his hand then turns into a raging rabid dog, his minders holding him back as he storms through his office while ferociously spitting: “I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL HIM!”
Hang on, hang on. It’s when Logan and Kendall send insults to each other through an assistant, ending their tyrannical tirade only when “L-to-the-OG” begins cackling maniacally down the phone in response to his son’s lame retorts.
Nup. Nope. No way. It’s definitely the bit where Shiv Roy spits savagely into what appears to be her diary with such a look of disgust on her face that it’s a miracle it doesn’t erupt spontaneously into flames…
There are so many good bits. Too many good bits. It’s all good bits. In the season three teaser for Succession, there is so much quality content that it’s impossible to decide which is the best moment. Holy freaking hell, this is a great trailer.
All of it is gold. Absolutely every single second. I’m just so happy that Succession is finally on the way back, and that, going by this absolutely titanic trailer, it remains the best show on television.
Seal me in a coffin with a Shiv Roy spitball and leave me in hibernation until the first episode of season three lands, because I simply cannot wait any longer for this.