I recently read Taskmaster:
200 220 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People by Alex Horne, and was… underwhelmed.
The meat of the book is a collection of Taskmaster-style tasks either for individuals, or groups, or teams. If you played human jousting, or blindfold doughnut fishing, or leaky-guttering-water-transporter, or any of the other games Ruth and I hosted at Ruth & JTA‘s Stag/Hen Party way back in the day… you’re thinking in the right kinds of ballpark. The activities presented are similar to those shown on the Taskmaster TV show, but with fewer prop requirements.
Perhaps one in ten to one in five of the ideas are genuinely good, but if you want to run your own Taskmaster-like game with your friends… you’re probably best to just adapt some of the games from the show, or sit down for an hour or two with a notepad, a pen, some funny friends, and a supply of whatever chemical stimulates your imagination!
One part of the book I did enjoy, though, was the accounts of parts of the TV show that didn’t make it into the final edit. I really love the TV show, and it was great to get the inside scoop on what tasks worked and didn’t, what got cut and why, and so on. This bit of the book, hidden at the end and using a much smaller typeface as if it’s ashamed to be there, was excellent and highly enjoyable.
Perhaps a future edition could have much more of that – there’ve been many more seasons since the book came out! – and drop some of the less-interesting tasks!