Taskmaster Series 19 Episode 1: The Stats Round Up

***Warning! Past this papier mâché version of Greg Davies’ head are SPOILERS for Taskmaster Series 19 Episode 1! Do not proceed if you have not watched Taskmaster Series 19 Episode 1!***

From Pealympic loser to raisin champion: Mathew Baynton wins the first episode of Taskmaster Series 19 with a fine score of 19 (3.8 PPT) — but Stevie Martin (17, 3.4 PPT) is right behind his eye-watering short shorts…

Let’s make like a fish in an armoured vehicle and DIVE into some stats!

• Mathew’s winning score of 19 is decidedly decent — only seven contestants have scored higer in a first episode. Former champions Sarah Kendall (S11) and Mae Martin (S15) both scored 19 in their first episodes (although worth mentioning that Mae got that score despite getting disqualified in the live task). Chris Ramsey (S13) is still the recordholder for Best First Episode — although his opening score of 23 still wasn’t enough to win him the crown in the end…
• Winning the first episode is a moderately good indicator of success for the rest of the series — in the previous eighteen series, the winner of the first episode has gone on to win the series eight times (44.44%), and they’ve finished in the top two thirteen times (72.22%). Again worth mentioning though that the previous two series have bucked the trend — Steve Pemberton won the first (and second) episode of Series 17 but ended up finishing third, while Rosie Jones won the first episode of Series 18 but ended up in last place (the first contestant to do this since Alice Levine in Series 6).

A slightly delirious start to the new series.

• At the other end of the table, Fatiha scored 10 points — only thirteen contestants have posted a lower score in a first episode (although she still managed double the number of points as Mathew Baynton’s on-screen crush, Charlotte Ritchie, who scored just 5 points in the first episode of Series 11). All is not lost though — Fatiha still managed to have a better first episode than Series 18 champion Andy Zaltzman, who is the only contestant to hit a single digit score in the first episode and go on to win the series. Perhaps she’ll be like her former school teacher next week and come out swinging (hopefully not with a golfclub).
• Jason Mantzoukas won the first prize task of the series with a pulldown map — I believe (but as always am willing to be proved wrong in the comments) that it’s the second time a real* map has been entered as a prize task, after Joe Wilkinson brought in a map of Grand Union Canal signed by a lock-keeper who worked there. Unlike Jason, he received one point for his efforts.
• I’m not counting stuff like David Baddiel’s sign that told you how to get out of a field or whimsical maps. I want REAL MAPS ONLY.
• Winning the first prize task isn’t a great indicator for winning the whole series —Noel Fielding (S4 champion), Lou Sanders (S8 champion) and Mae Martin (S15 champion) all won the first prize task in their series, but Josh Widdicombe (S1) and Andy Zaltzman (S18) both scored 1s, while Joe Wilkinson (S2), Phil Wang (S7), Fern Brady (S14) and Rosie Jones (S18) all won their first prize tasks and ended up in last place in the series.

“That’s what I thought… two jars of piss.”

• Moving onto the first task proper — a good solid vinegar-based task that was designed to infuriate the contestants at every stage. It was the twelfth time an objectively judged task* has opened the show, and the sixth time that the first task of a new series has been “Fastest Wins”, and in that sense it had similarities with Series 8’s opener “find the receiver of the baby monitor attached to your helmet” and Series 12’s “strike Alex with a ball”, in the sense that it involved running around the house searching for something that was incredibly annoying (a baby monitor/Alex Horne).

*For new readers, “objectively judged” means that there’s a tangible criteria for success which can be measured (in this case, time taken to finish the task). “Subjectively judged” tasks are ones where Greg chooses the best based on the criteria of a task/his own devilish whims.

• Stevie Martin won the task with a time of 7m42 (and no vinegar spilled) — something which bodes quite well for her (and my stats). The contestants best at “Fastest Wins” tasks wins their series 50% of the time, while the winner of the first filmed task has gone on to win the whole series seven out of eighteen times (most recently John Robins (S17) and Sam Campbell (S16) both won the first filmed task). By comparison, only once has someone scored 1 point in the first filmed task and gone on to win the series — Dara Ó Briain in Series 14 (aka The Second Greatest Player Of All Time, aka Mr Waitwhat). So Jason can take heart…

“This season’s theme? SCIEN-” *immediately drops vinegar*

• Interestingly (relative term) Rosie Ramsey was allowed to keep her 2 points despite not actually finding the fish tank (and instead getting a jar and writing the words “fish tank” on it). This contrasts directly with an incident in Series 18, when Jack Dee was penalised for failing to put the “special glasses” (even though he did find a pair of glasses/goggles which Alex called special). In explaining his ruling, Greg said that he would have docked points from Rosie, if it had been a normal fish-tank and not a “stupid play on words” — potentially the first time Greg has explicitly overruled a task because he got annoyed at one of Alex’s puns.

A delighted Rosie Ramsey.

• The second task was the first subjectively judged filmed task of the series — and the first “sneaky” two-part task of the series, where Alex reveals there is an extra task after the first task is over (the classic example being “make the most exotic sandwich/eat your exotic sandwich” from Series 4). Usually these kinds of sneaky tasks come a bit later in the series — in fact, I think this is the first time there’s been a “sneaky” two-part task in the first episode*, perhaps setting the tone for this series to be wonderfully, torturously unfair throughout…

*I’m not including the secret two-part task from the first episode of Series 15, where contestants had to unravel a ball of string in the first part of the task and then put a ball of string on the cushion, as Alex technically didn’t reveal the second part of the task to the contestants — they just had to find it on the back of the task (which, of course, Frankie failed to do).

• This task was effectively a crueller version of a task from Series 1, where contestants simply had to make something that looked impressive in reverse (which is where the much beloved Tree Wizard came from).

“Comedy’s all about YES AND, not NO BUT.”

• Mathew won for his pseudo 70s Eurovision song — I believe he’s the first contestant ever to go and get out a guitar, unbidden, in the first episode of a series (a slightly more ominous tone to set, to be honest). It means that Mathew is currently the early leader in subjectively judged tasks, with a subjectively judged PPT score of 4.50. This is a good sign — in three of the previous four series, the contestant who has been best at subjectively judged tasks has gone on to win (Mae Martin, John Robins and Andy Zaltzman).
• At the other end of the scale, Fatiha followed up her 1 in the prize task with a 1 here (even watching it backwards and forwards several times I’m still not entirely sure what was). Subjectively judged tasks an area that she will obviously need to improve in if she wants to challenge — no contestant has ever won the series while being the worst in the series in subjective tasks. Both Ed Gamble (S9) and Sam Campbell (S16) came fourth in subjective tasks in their series, but they also had a very impressive objective task score which Fatiha is yet to really demonstrate either (a few good pea-catches in her hijab aside…).
• The final filmed task of the episode was the Pealympics (or Pealy-mpics, if you’re Jason). This was another multi-part task — in fact, every task of this first episode had at least two parts, the first time that’s ever happened in a first episode.

Stevie mid-breakdown.

• The first event involved 26 cushions, with the pea being hidden underneath the 16th cushion (ie, the 16th letter in the alphabet, the letter “P”) — this is a similar strategy used in Taskmaster NZ Series 3, where contestants had to find a duck from a series of 26 buckets (the duck was Bucket Four because duck begins with the fourth letter), or the infamous “roses” task in Taskmaster Australia Series 1. Effectively the lesson is — if you’re ever on Taskmaster and you find twenty sixth of something, start translating it into the alphabet.
• Stevie ignored this advice and instead took the approach of hiding a pea underneath a cushion herself (contravening the “do not tamper” rule specificed on the task, and by a piece of infuriating luck managing to pick the cushion that actually had the pea underneath it) — in this sense, she mirrored a tactic from Rhod Gilbert, who “found” a satsuma in a sock by placing a satsuma into a sock and claiming he’d found it.

“Throw a pea that way?”

• The second event involved building a tower out of carrots to rest your pea on — there have been a few tower-based tasks over the years, most recently in the first task of Series 16, where contestants had to make the tallest tower of cans while blindfolded. There have also been towers made out of specifically fruit and/or vegetables — in Series 6 contestants had to build a tower out of lemons, while in Taskmaster NZ Series 2 contestants had to build a tower out of onions.
• While there have been many multi-part tasks in the show previously, I believe this is the first time one has used the framing device of the Olympics. It’s also rare for a multi-part task to be so short — whereas other multi-part tasks have been judged as “fastest wins” (ie, the Bingo task from Series 15 or the Fortune Cookie task from Series 18, where the aim was to complete all of the component parts of the task in the shortest possible time), here each “event” lasted just three minutes, and contestants would move onto the next “event” regardless of how they did in the previous one. This might sound like a technical point, but it made the flavour of the task very different to those previous versions, both in the sense that it made everything much more urgent and chaotic, but also it rewarded contestants who were able to live in the present (Jason Mantzoukas & Rosie Ramsey) rather than dwell on how miserably they had performed in a previous event (Mathew Baynton & Stevie Martin).

“I’m not a bird!

• In the end, the episode was decided in the live task, with Mathew striding ahead of the podium-crashing Jason. It’s the third series in a row where the final task of the first episode has proven pivotal, after Steve Pemberton secured (joint) top spot in the last task of the Series 17 opener and Rosie Jones leapfrogged everyone in the last task to win the first episode of Series 18. Live task prowess is a good indicator of overall success — in thirteen of the previous eighteen series (72.2%) the champion has been either best or second best at live tasks in their series. In fact, you have to go back over five years to find the last contestant who scored poorly in live tasks and still went on to win the series — Ed Gamble, champion of Series 9, who averaged 2.40 points per live task.

All Time Leaderboard* Summary

• Usually this will show where the contestants are on the all-time leaderboard — but as this series is one episode old at this point, it’s more useful to compare them to the other contestants’ first episodes.

• Mat finds himself in joint 8th position for first episode scores — a decent enough start, although it’s worth noting that it’s boosted by his studio score (9, with a good prize task and a live task win). His filmed objective task score was just 2.5 PPT, which is not great — and in fact objective task score is the best indicator of success in the series. Only once in the past twelve series has the champion of the series not been the best at objectively judged task in their series — that was Andy Zaltzman last series, who found himself behind both long-time rival Jack Dee and Babatundé Aléshé.

• Stevie Martin nabbed 17 points, the joint 25th best start to a series (you’re right, that is an underwhelming fact), but she’s in good company — 17 was the first episode score for Katherine Ryan (Series 2 champion), Liza Tarbuck (Series 6 champion), Morgana Robinson (Series 12 champion) and Dara Ó Briain (Series 14 champion). She’s also the only contestant so far to score at least 4 points in a filmed objective and subjective task (winning the fish tank task and scoring 4 for her excellent backwards cool effort).

• Rosie Ramsey and Jason Mantzoukas managed a pretty good 16 (3.2 PPT), putting them joint 37th on the list. Both had disappointing starts in the filmed tasks, scoring 4 points from the first two tasks (2.0PPT), but were boosted by their efforts in the Pealympics (both scoring 5 points each). Jason joins a gang of people to have won the most number of tasks in the first episode without winning the episode itself, alongside Jack Dee, Joanne McNally, Julian Clary, Dara Ó Briain, Mike Wozniak and Lee Mack (among many others).

• Fatiha El-Ghorri scored 10 (2.0PPT), putting her in joint 77th place. After one just episode, she finds herself stranded at the bottom: she’s six points behind Jason and Rosie — it’s the biggest gap ever between last place and the contestants above them after one episode, level with Roisin Conaty in Series 1 (fingers crossed she has a better time of it that Roisin did…). Fatiha was the only contestant in this episode not to win a task, which is not a great sign — only once in the history of the show has a contestant failed to win a single task in the first episode and then gone on to win the series (Josh Widdicombe in Series 1). She also scored just two points in the studio task (scoring one point in each one) — in the history of the show, only three contestants have scored worse in studio tasks in a first episode (Charlotte Ritchie, Ivo Graham…and Series 18 champion, Andy Zaltzman. So there’s always hope…)

And Finally…

• Even after just one episode, it’s clear the vibe in the studio this series is a bit bonkers — a combination of Fatiha’s zero-tolerance for Alex’s shenanigans, Stevie’s nervous energy, Mat’s “on the verge of a breakdown” demeanour, Rosie’s no-nonsense attitude and, of course, Jason’s desire to break as much stuff as possible. And that’s borne out by the statistics — the slightly delirious energy at the start of the episode meant that this was the longest the show has ever taken to actually get to the prize task in a series, after Greg’s strange and rambling intro, Alex’s “magic pen” bit and Alex’s sideswipe at Greg’s acting abilities (with Greg’s excellent “I’m amazed you’re in show business!” rejoinder). Fatiha began introducing her prize task at 3 minutes and 52 seconds — most other series (yes, I checked) are into the prize task well before the three minute mark, and it’s a full two minutes later than the prize task introduction in Series 2. Not that I’m complaining.
• It’s also the second time a contestant has interrupted the first “banter section” of the series (as in, before they’ve been properly introduced in the show through their prize task) — in this case it was Jason Mantzoukas saying Alex’s pen routine was an “auspicious start to a new season” (and was rightly corrected by Alex on his use of the word “season”). The only other time that’s happened was in Series 12, when three of the contestants got into an argument about the ethical quandaries implicit on sitting on Father Christmas’ face.

If you want to read more of these stats, simply get out your lock-pick set and break into my house through the French windows while shouting “LOOOOC!”… or just click here to see The Big Spreadsheet.

And don’t forget to listen to Taskmaster The People’s Podcast with me and Jenny Eclair — and this Monday we’re joined by last series’ champion and Stat King, Andy Zaltzman! We’ll be judging everyone’s performance and working out what we’d have done differently — and Andy reveals an exclusive SECRET about why he saved the hot dog costume until the very last task of the series… LISTEN IN TO FIND OUT HOW AND WHY AND WHAT!