Taskmaster’s New Year Treat Returns with a Brand-New Celebrity Line Up

AMELIA DIMOLDENBERG, CAROL VORDERMAN, GREG JAMES, SIR MO FARAH and REBECCA LUCY TAYLOR

Feeling in an unusually festive mood, the almighty Greg Davies accompanied by his dutiful sidekick Little Alex Horne star in the brand-new one-off special Taskmaster’s New Year Treat which returns to Channel 4 this winter for its third instalment.

Lord Greg will be welcoming five celebrity contestants from entirely different and diverse spheres of entertainment to compete in the name of Hogmanay as they apply their skill, nerve, and grit into completing a series of intriguing challenges in the hope of laying claim to the special trophy of Greg’s Golden Eyebrows.

Hoping to impress are; comedian, creator, host and journalist  Amelia Dimoldenberg (Chicken Shop Date), TV host, numbers queen and First Lady of Channel 4 Carol Vorderman (Pride of Britain, ITV), presenter and writer Greg James, four time Olympic Champion Sir Mo Farah, and Mercury Music Prize & Brit Award nominated pop star Rebecca Lucy Taylor aka Self Esteem. The customary assault course of bizarre challenges will be thrown their way, but how will these celebrities fair in the international hit show?

NOTES TO EDITORS:

• 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.

• 149 episodes have been produced in the UK so far, as part of a landmark six season deal with Channel 4 in 2020. Series 10 – 15 air on Channel 4 from Autumn 2020, following nine record-breaking series on UKTV’s Dave.

• The show enjoyed its best performance on record with its Channel 4 launch which reached 3.9 million consolidated views after the first episode, winning the majority share of young viewers 16 – 34’s and making it the best-performing new entertainment show of this year (Broadcast, 2020). 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 2021, Best Comedy Entertainment at the BAFTAs 2020 and won Best Entertainment Programme at the Broadcast Awards 2018, having previously received two more nominations for both awards. It has also been nominated for the Bruce Forsyth Entertainment Award at the NTA’s 2021 and 2022, 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 94 countries and aired on The CW in the U.S. in 2020.

• Over 300 episodes have been produced outside the UK with local versions now on air across the Nordics, in New Zealand, Croatia and Portugal where it ranked third for most watched entertainment programs on its channel RTP. While in Australia Paramount have picked up the rights to make their own local version.

• The format has seen huge success in Europe, with the Swedish version winning Programme of the Year at the Kristallen in 2020 and 2019 (Sweden’s TV Academy Awards) and its fifth series for SVT reaching ratings of over a 50% market share in a primetime weekend slot. Norway’s original version of Taskmaster, ‘Kongen Befaler’’s won Best Entertainment Show at the prestigious Golden Screen Awards 2020 and won the Norwegian TV Academy Award (Gullruten) for Best Entertainment in 2020, where a fourth has been commissioned by Discovery. Two new series have been ordered for MTV in Finland after its first episode ranked in the top ten most watched shows in the country, and a fifth series for TV2 in Denmark.

• The Taskmaster YouTube channel has seen huge success internationally, reaching just over 6.1 billion impressions since it first launched in October 2019, with just under half of the channel’s views and over a third of its subscribers originating from the U.S. The channel has had over 90 million hours worth of content viewed with 41% of those hours from the US (37 million hours watched). The show has grown significantly in popularity with U.S. audiences and over the last year there have been total of 54 million views in the last 12 months reaching a million subscribers, while the channel audience has increased by 438% in the USA.

• #HomeTasking had over 100 million impressions across all content on YouTube. Viewing grew by 42%, while subscribers grew by 85% since it launched on the Taskmaster YouTube channel. It was watched in 125 countries with viewers ranging from the US to the UK and from Moldova to Mongolia.

• The Taskmaster Book 200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People has sold over 148,000 copies, while a second book ‘Bring Me The Head of the Taskmaster’ published in September 2021 and has sold almost 30,000 to date. Both books featured as Sunday Times Bestsellers at launch. The Swedish version of the book has sold 108,000 copies to date.

• A Taskmaster boardgame was released in Autumn 2019 and entirely sold out a week after it went on sale. It has sold almost 180,000 copies to date along with an expansion pack. Both are available to buy on the official Taskmaster shop, www.TaskmasterStore.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 £115,000, 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.