The Series: "Taskmaster"

Where You Can Stream It: PlutoTV (Series 1-6), The Taskmaster YouTube Channel (Series 1-11, regularly updated)

The Pitch: Five comedians arrive at a mysterious house, where they are forced to perform bizarre tasks that challenge them physically, intellectually, and creatively. Months later they are invited to a stage where the Taskmaster, comedian Greg Davies, and his long-suffering henchman Alex Horne (actually the show's creator and producer), judge their problem-solving skills — and judge them harshly.

At the beginning of each episode of "Taskmaster," the contestants are required to bring in one strange thing in one particular category (like "The Thing They're Proudest Of," or "The Strangest Autograph on the Strangest Vegetable"). The contestant with the most points that episode takes home all the things, while the contestant with the most points at the end of the season takes home a much-coveted gold trophy in the shape of Greg Davies' head.

Why It's Essential Viewing:

The pitch may sound strange, but let me assure you that I have never fallen in love with a game show the way I have fallen in love with "Taskmaster." If I die without getting to be a contestant on this show — and I probably will, since I'm not a British comedian and the American version of the show didn't catch on — I'll die very unhappy indeed.

Over the course of over one dozen series, "Taskmaster" has built up a peculiar identity for itself. The "Taskmaster" house, where the majority of the challenges take place, is an odd little building with design elements that change from series to series, and little nooks and crannies with surprising secrets and useful tools. The tasks themselves arrive in folded white paper, stamped with a wax imprint of the "Taskmaster" logo. Sometimes they are hidden, or delivered by a surrogate, like a remote-controlled mouse.

While some of the tasks are amusingly rudimental — some read only "Sneeze" or "Don't Blink" — others are bizarrely elaborate, and require contestants to closely follow bizarre rules or get brutally disqualified. Others reward lateral thinking, like a challenge to build a house out of beer coasters, but you also have to run outside and ring the doorbell on the house before the timer ticks down from 60 seconds, then before it ticks down from 58 seconds, and so on. Some contestants do that task as written, constantly running themselves ragged, but one of them just removes the doorbell and takes it back into the staging area with them, calmly pressing it without the added stress.

Most game shows require you to know specific information or show off your expertise in a particular field. "Taskmaster" requires you to solve problems in your own unique way and be completely surprised by how everyone else's brains work.

A Double Dastardly Double Dare

If "Taskmaster" was just people performing weird tasks that would be enough to entertain and challenge the audience. But Alex Horne's creation is also, if you'll forgive the modern lingo, a whole vibe.

Presented in a lavish vermillion stage, gilded in gold, while Greg Davies resides over the proceedings in a cartoonish throne, the air of superiority in "Taskmaster" is fundamentally hilarious, especially when some of the tasks are childish things like "Destroy a Cake" or "Fart." Greg Davies doesn't create the tasks, even though he's officially "The Taskmaster," but he does give points to each competitor based on how effectively he thinks they completed the task, whether they follow the rules, or whether they complimented him or pissed him off.

Alex Horne and his team create the tasks and Horne himself is the referee, giving the players hints or — when the rules allow (and, on one notorious occasion, when he was bribed) — some assistance when the players require an extra set of hands. He's also game for total humiliation, and over the course of the series he gets tied up, unclothed, and had edible masks eaten off of his face. Rhod Gilbert, one of the most unusual problem-solvers in the history of the series, once threw a javelin in Horne's direction so hard it impaled itself in the wall of a caravan.

Competitors in "Taskmaster" have been moved to elation, frustration, and even seemingly real tears, because they're discovering just how creative they can be, and how foolish as well. Let's just say that if you ever find yourself in a pitch-black room, and asked to paint a rainbow using colors you can only see via blacklight, so they all look the same? Look for a light switch, because there's no rule that says you can't turn the lights on, and you'll look ridiculous if someone else does it while you embarrassingly muddled through.

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