You are also allocated a secret task. This is yours, and yours alone to complete on the sly during the game, but don’t get caught! Players have the opportunity to guess what other player’s secret tasks were. If undetected the player gets three points, if someone guesses the challenge however, they gain the three points instead. Anyway, Horne and Davies tormenting five different comics per season is a proven formula. It is possible, of course, to be too formulaic: Taskmaster’s lineup only broke away from its strict “one BAME man, one woman, all the rest white men” setup in season four, when it allowed a second woman in. On the board are piles of tasks. Four piles each correspond to a different location – the kitchen, living room, lab, and garden. Alongside these, there are secret tasks and final tasks, meaning in all, there are 200 different task cards! Before each game, decide on how many tasks you want to complete, and then, each round, it is up to the Taskmaster to decide from which of the four location piles to choose the task. Each player will have a secret task to carry out during the whole game, and if the game ends without that task being detected, the player will get 3 bonus points.

The challenge cards are divided by room with appropriate tasks in each. These cards are laid out in piles on the board which resembles a plan of the Taskmaster house in the show. The Taskmaster board game does an incredible job of recreating the television show in your home. This is certainly the best game I have played based on a television show. That said, they do tend to be a bit naff and so that may not be the greatest accolade I could offer. So to this I will add, that Taskmaster is a great party game and holds up to others even without the tv tie-in.As first runs go, Taskmaster Series 1 is a perfect introduction to why the show has become such a roaring success, and that’s really down to the cast. Roisin Conaty was lovably naff, whereas Tim Key was so fearlessly competitive he broke all the rules, stooping low enough to lie about shooting a TV show for Comic Relief to win a task ( yes, really!). The combination of quietly furious Romesh Ranganathan and dry-witted Frank Skinner gave us the beautiful moment where, during a task about throwing a tea bag into a cup from the greatest distance, Frank Skinner jokes ‘someone will spend the first 45 minutes realising it’s easier when they’re wet’ and the scene cuts to an infuriated Romesh discovering just that. The rules of the game are pretty straight forward. Players take it in turns to be the Taskmaster, putting the gilded head of Greg Davies in one of four locations – Garden, Lab, Kitchen and Living Room, and drawing a task to provide to their fellow contestants. You have to read all of the instructions and that’s pretty much it. From there on in, it’s the Taskmaster’s call. Even the points scoring is arbitrary, with the Taskmaster able to dole out points for whatever reason they want. But it almost doesn’t even matter who the contestants are. If the cast is a bit underpowered, Taskmaster gets by on silly charm and on knowing the pleasures of simple games. Some of its finest moments have come from only slightly embellishing the office pastime of throwing balled-up pieces of paper into a wastebasket – and here, the best game is an old-fashioned round of hide and seek variant Grandma’s footsteps, albeit one played in a railway museum and featuring Horne, the spotter, standing on a bridge wearing a helmet covered in fairy lights. It is funny when Lou Sanders squeezes into a bin and shuffles forward pretending to be part of the landscape, but it is even better when Joe Thomas just plays wholeheartedly and fully sprints from one hiding place to another, narrowly making it before Horne pops up again to try to catch him.

So many delights in Series 7! Phil Wang’s exposing costume, Kerry Godliman’s ‘bosh!’ approach to tasking, James Acaster’s continuing refusal to return a hello from Alex, Rhod Gilbert’s disturbingly singular imagination and Jessica Knappett falling off the stage while demonstrating her most magnificent walk. A particular treat in this series was that, like Roisin Conaty’s before him, Rhod Gilbert’s friendship with Greg Davies opened the door to insights into the Taskmaster’s life… and his wardrobe (which Rhod hid inside while Greg slept). Who else could get a picture of the Taskmaster’s mum in a fez, in the bath? Top-tier trolling from a clearly troubled soul, and an excellent set of contestants. LM 2. Series FourPlayers take turns performing the Davies role of Taskmaster although there is the option of one person being the sole arbiter of awarding points if they are unwilling to partake in the challenges, are feeling unsure about joining in too fully, or if they are just power hungry. Taskmaster Trophy Task: Taskmaster The Board Game Although Jo Brand spent most of her time in the CBA club, she also had moments of sheer brilliance (scream-singing Jerusalem down the phone to Alex as an egg timer) and other series highlights were Ed Gamble’s meltdowns and Rose Matafeo’s outstanding rootin’ tootin’ Taskmaster theme. ED 6. Series Fourteen