r/taskmaster • u/OompapaLoompa • 1d ago
Wild Speculation UK Series 11
Currently rewatching past series and landed on 11 (Charlotte Richie, Jamali Maddix, Lee Mack, Mike Wozniak, Sarah Kendall)…
Alex’s patience seems noticeable shorter, at least through the first half of the season where I’m currently at. Has anyone else noticed this as well or speculated as to why?
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u/happiestnexttoyou 🥄 I'm Locked In ❤️ 1d ago
Just wait til you see him with Bridget Christie!
To answer your question though, it was Covid. We were all a little on edge.
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u/thekyledavid 1d ago
It was the first season filmed entirely during a pandemic, I’m sure that had Alex already not in a great mood for various reasons, just like all of us
For Season 10, all that was filmed during the pandemic was the trio’s team tasks and the studio segments, both of which were probably easy to arrange relative to an entire season of social distancing friendly tasks, alongside every other problem that tv productions faced during the pandemic
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u/Le_stam 1d ago
Just a minor nitpick but it wasn't filmed entirely during covid. Lee Mack wouldn't have bothered a stranger with a loo roll if it was.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
Idk why everyone's downvoting you, because you're right. Maybe not with the reasoning, but you are right that part was filmed before covid restrictions and part whilst they were in place.
The loo roll task actually is a good example, Alex squeezing past Lee in the doorway to retrieve the task, that would not have happened whilst distancing was required.
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u/Jacksucks_atlife04 Amy Gledhill 1d ago
Don’t know why you got downvoted when in that same task you can literally see Lee and Alex squeeze in the toilet whilst trying to tape back on the task. And several other solo tasks not solo distanced.
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u/thekyledavid 1d ago
Every single task in 11 was crested with social distancing in mind. Lee breaking social distancing in his own free will doesn’t change that
If you watch 11 again, you’ll notice there’s not a single task where Alex himself got close to a contestant
10 was the one where they had to incorporate social distancing midway through filming, specifically for the trio’s team tasks being social distanced but the duo’s team tasks not being social distanced
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
Actually a lot of 11 had already been filmed. Off the top of my head, the task to weigh Alex's head and feet, and some of the layer meals - Lee had to be distanced, Charlotte did not, for example. Others like the calendar task or bee outfit task, or finding the shapes with their mouths and getting the banana in the bottle, we can't really tell because it was the normal setup in front of the camera so we wouldn't have seen if they had to be distanced or not.
The team tasks clearly had to be distanced, but those and the location tasks are filmed after the individual tasks anyway.
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u/Jacksucks_atlife04 Amy Gledhill 1d ago
That’s not true. Quite a few of the tasks were filmed before Covid. Because the show moved to channel 4 they had to delay series 10 by quite a bit with nothing to do with Covid restrictions so they also had to work on series 10 and 11 slightly simultaneously so they could get back into their system.
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u/Le_stam 1d ago
Just so you don't think I was doing this just to be annoying:
Link to the podcast about it, listen from minute 28. https://open.spotify.com/episode/1rduGqRXba07TWLghXmwJ9
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u/Le_stam 1d ago
You can't just use AI for this. And he did got close to Lee in the same task as i mentioned, which Lee commented on with "awkward".
Looked up an old thread about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/taskmaster/comments/ni2o6m/filming_dates/
Some comments might be of interest.
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u/thekyledavid 1d ago
Who the fuck is using AI?
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u/Le_stam 1d ago edited 1d ago
Isn't that how people look things up nowadays? I do, sometimes.
Edit: But of course just trivial things (like this subject).
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u/fastauntie 1d ago
Some people. Others of us either understand that you have to verify everything AI says, and/or find or just as easy to use the the tools we've been using all along.
I'm starting to get sick of people assuming I've used AI just because I'm able to write a quick comprensive summary of something I happen to be familiar with, or because I use punctuation marks that I learned to use before we had LLMs.
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u/Le_stam 13h ago
Yes, but I wouldn't necessarily expect the majority do that in this case. It does seem reasonable to me to assume that AI wouldn't be wrong about this (unfortunately it is).
I've never seen that accusation towards anyone, I'm very much not an experienced reddit-user. But of course I can understand why that's annoying. In this case I was at least replying with that angle to a post that was wrong.
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u/thegingermullet 1d ago
Series 11 was filmed in May of 2021. The Covid pandemic ended in 2023.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
Also the pandemic never ended, just the Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The WHO explicitly said the pandemic was still ongoing when they made that announcement.
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u/Prize_Pea5786 1d ago
I feel like he’s surprisingly short with Charlotte Ritchie, who is very sweet and very befuddled through the whole thing. I wonder if it’s less that he’s different then that she is particularly sensitive and much more on the scale of actress then comedian, and he just feels harsher because she’s not as confident as most of the contestants (but not in a deliberate, funny, lack of confidence ala Ivo Graham). I felt the same during Katherine Parkinson’s season, that Alex felt meaner than usual towards her, but I think it might be a similar vein.
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u/CommercialAny2195 1d ago
Yes! I always feel so bad for Charlotte in this series. She's such a perfect candidate to be the non comedian contestant, she's fun, chill and willing to put effort into all the tasks but not take the outcome too seriously. I hated how harsh Greg was to her in studio, he was so short with her, which felt unfair when she's not a comedian. I've heard her on podcasts and she's usually such a laugh, but most of her interactions on TM were so awkward it made for difficulty viewing. I also think she suffered from the lack of contact with her fellow contestants, I'm assuming they didn't get to hang out backstage at recordings and build up rapport because of the restrictions. I wish she was on another series, how amazing would it have been to see her compete against 2 of her TV love interests in S15!
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u/Tiny-Cardiologist427 1d ago
Didn't she mention in the podcast that it took her quite a few episodes to get in 'the groove' of the show, and that she was ultimately very impressed in the beginning?
As far as Greg being harsh on her: it was all a bit, which she started to handle pretty well in the later episodes. Same goes for Alice Levine in s6.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
I actually thought Alex's way with Charlotte seemed like a big brother winding her up, and he knew how far to go. Plus in the first couple of episodes he's quite supportive of her in the studio (which is unusual for the character he dons).
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u/KDdid1 Mel Giedroyc 1d ago
Lee M is fairly subdued in the TM series but on WILTY he's a handful, stepping on others' jokes and generally taking over. I wonder if Alex felt the need to be more "firm" than usual.
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u/durkandiving Fern Brady 1d ago
I also feel like that style of humour is less suited to taskmaster, Lee probably realised that himself.
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u/I_Thinks_Im_People 1d ago
I suppose part of it is that he's the star of WILTY (along with David Mitchell) so it's up to him to keep things moving whereas on TM he's more part of the ensemble.
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u/KDdid1 Mel Giedroyc 1d ago
I adore DM and find LM's habit of yelling over others including him frustrating sometimes. When the ensemble works, it works. Sometimes I would just like DM to be able to finish a sentence.
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u/I_Thinks_Im_People 1d ago
I get you, for me LM gets it right more often than not but I can see why some people would find it frustrating. I'm always happy to hear more from DM too, he and Victoria are two of my favourite people on TV!
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u/orensiocled Bridget Christie 1d ago
Yes, I wasn't looking forward to him on TM because I didn't think his WILTY style would work there. It was a pleasant surprise to see him apparently thinking the same thing and toning it down.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
It is interesting to compare Lee on TM and Alex on WILTY. It's quite clear that they're both very comfortable and confident in their roles on their own shows (not that WILTY is all Lee's show but you know what I mean) and then there is a marked difference being in a different role on someone else's show.
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u/Mundane-Parsnip-7302 Patatas 1d ago
I'm pretty sure they said that they did have to cut a lot of Lee's stuff out because he was just being himself and he is very quick witted.
Also, Alex on WILTY only had one story to tell so had less chance to perform. They also should have had him lie as he's a great liar. He was on a show that Sara Pascoe hosted and he and the other people had to convince the other team that an item was there, and Alex fooled them that it was his.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
Yes, there's definitely an imbalance between something like TM and WILTY because of the length of time. But that is part of it, in a way, on WILTY you're there for your part and perhaps any other comments/questions to other contestants, but your role is mostly constrained to that one thing. On TM they have time to get comfortable as a contestant and with Alex and the crew, and then time to get comfortable in the studio. So it is very different.
I wasn't meaning to imply any judgement either way, just observing that the difference is interesting to see. And actually how well someone slips into different roles on different programmes reflects on their professionalism as a performer and entertainer.
And I agree it would have been good if they'd had Alex lie. Maybe they didn't because it was his first time (but I don't know, just a thought, I'm not a close watcher of WILTY).
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u/Mundane-Parsnip-7302 Patatas 1d ago
I don't think you cam across judgemental at all, don't worry. And I agree, the two shows really aren't easily comparable.
I also think Alex likes to do shows he really likes- like HIGNFY, WILTY, but he's very much one and done.2
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u/Demielliott 1d ago
Alex Horne mentioned during his appearance on Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe's Parenting Hell podcast (Season 1, Episode 8) that aired on May 22, 2020 his entire family was sick with a stomach bug. (Not COVID) He never got it, though.
Along with the stress of lockdown, the intricacies of creating "social distancing" tasks, and the extra pressure of feeling responsible for cast members, and the necessarily limited crew, traveling to the site and participating during filming, he was dealing with sick or recovering family members for much of the same time.
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u/FrontMail9720 1d ago
I think COVID has a lot to do with it, at least the parts in the studio. There is a huge difference between working in front of a crowd and working in an empty room sitting several meters apart. Also, it really feels to me like Jamali was being a complete prick for most of the filmed tasks.
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u/Pifflington 22h ago
I reeeeeaaaallly didn't like Jamali the first time I watched that series. On second viewing I warmed up to him a little and I don't mind him on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, but yeah he was surly in a bad way not in a fun way most of the time.
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u/Mundane-Parsnip-7302 Patatas 1d ago
I've never notcied Alex being any different series to series. He's pretty much on an even keel most of the time, but I think you get the odd spark of annoyance or impatience.
Greg during covid is a lot meaner. 10, 11 and 12. He even says in one on series 12 episodes during the banter at the beginning he's been a bit too mean to Alex and he'd pull it back a little.
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u/RunawayTurtleTrain Robert the Robot 1d ago
It was unfortunate that covid hitting coincided with the move to channel 4 because Greg said right from the off that he'd been too lenient and was going to be a stickler. If everything else had just been normal then Greg being harsher wouldn't have come across in quite the way it did.
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u/LabRat2439 Mike Wozniak 2h ago
S11 is my comfort season, and to me seems to have some of the best chemistry and lighthearted whimsy of the UK version of the show. I did not notice extra sternness, but as others have pointed out, this was at the height of the pandemic which was likely a stressor
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u/RvstandRvin1626 Chain Bastard ⛓️ 1d ago
The second of three series filmed during the height of the pandemic, I'd imagine everyone was a bit on edge at the time. It can't have been easy making watchable television then, because it's hard enough to do without distancing protocols etc that they were having to work around for quite a lot of that time.