This was a *banner* episode for Victoria Coren Mitchell. All three of the recorded tasks were just incredible personality showcases for her in particular. First, there was the spectacle of a 49-year-old mother learning to ride a bike for the veey first time. Then, we had the amazing inhaler story, where I found myself making the exact same expression of shock as Desiree (she Bedazzled an inhaler!) And then, the absolute beauty that was Victoria's show of codebreaking expertise. Everything we saw from her was just fantastic, and you can tell it was a universal experience by how little people mentioned her looks or her husband in various comment sections. Neil, I'm so glad that Taskmaster does something valuable and important in your life. It makes me happy to watch it, it makes me happy to watch you watching it, and I think inherently, we all benefit from this knowledge that something we enjoy is providing a meaningful, non-superficial benefit to someone else. I hope that whatever is currently providing these great amounts of stress in your life ceases to do so very soon, and that your sources of joy will always be able to keep you grinning from ear to ear.
The series has been commissioned a further three series so we are getting to have more TM soon I hope Claudia Winkleman and Bill Bailey are on the list on take part
@@mcallisterwill Yeah I listened to the podcast. What's astonishing is VCM didn't get the "cool" pun Morgana went for with the ice and frozen peas. Talk about a whoosh! :)
@@kitsuneneko2567 Rachel Riley is high on my list of dream contestants for sure, along with Richard Ayoade and Alan Carr. Victoria was my #1 wish, so I'm very glad to have her on the show! Bill Bailey I hadn't considered, but I'm sure he'd be great, too!
I like to picture Victoria showing David these episodes after and heated discussions about what he would have done, or his admiration when she is brilliant :)
The code breaking task was the first time this series that I felt Victoria had a task which played to her strenghts. It was very impressive to see her solve that.
They actually have VCM on the Taskmaster Podcast this week (presented by Ed Gamble if you haven't heard of it) and straight away she makes it clear that a pun about layers is her type of humour, but also probably not Greg's.
Taskmaster is one of the highlights of my week. Absolutely love this show. I'm so happy that you love it as much as i do. I really love your reactions to all the other shows too, especially QI and WILTY. I'm totally addicted to Only Connect too, so loving seeing Victoria in this series. Looking forward to more of your posts.
If you have not listened to the Podcast this week with Victoria. It is very fun with great stories including the behind the scenes story about taping of the studio bits. She talks about how it feels without the audience reactions especially her puns.
Best riddle/puzzle task EVER! Was laughing throughout. First Victoria nailing it, not even considered to ask for more information from her teammate, and then those 3 !!!
I absolutely LOVED this episode! Like most of us, I spent the odd hour of my teens wondering what was cool. Like most of us, I eventually decided that not caring what anybody thinks is the epitome of cool. Buttering toast with croquet mallets may only be objectively slightly cool, but it was the best effort of the bunch. Victoria's mad code breaking skills were on display, along with her impatience with anyone else's input. I loved Guz being so over that task while Desiree's need to murder him slowly rose. I think Alex enjoyed that more than anyone!
I was very excited for Victoria watching her learn to ride a bike and completely in her element decoding. And first episode she didn’t end up last. Just the glee in her face when riding the bike probably makes this my favorite episode of taskmaster.
I think that bike task said complete the course, not stay on the course. I would have started then just biked around the course aimlessly for half an hour occasionally slowing to actually advance a little.
I remember Ed Gamble talking about he loves going to Escape Rooms, and I think his series contestants (The Chickpeas) went on a few. I could imagine this series contestants in one and resulting in Desiree killing Guz.
Ed Gamble, in the podcast actually described the way Guz is worse than useless in the teamtask and how much he just irritated Desiree as 'little brother vibes'
Hey Neil! I just wanted to second your lovely summary. I can’t even identify why TM “elevates our souls” except to say there are layers upon layers of compelling TV here, and it’s not all traditional “comedy”. Like Greg said (and you displayed on your face) watching VCM learn to ride a bike was quite moving. There’s a lot of this in the earlier seasons- in part because they weren’t COVID-distanced in studio- where the contestants patted each other on the back and exchanged congratulatory handshakes and even hugs. (See: Wumar, the delightful low-scoring buddy duo of Mark Watson & Nish Kumar.) I’m overjoyed to hear there are more series commissioned. Like you (and most of us I suspect) TM has been an absolutely necessary balm to me for the stresses of the past few years. Keep the reactions coming, and thank you for being a part of that healing entertainment tonic.
I love how the first two tasks of riding a bike and being cool could not be less in Victoria's wheelhouse, and then there's some cryptography and BAM! She's back in the game! This week's episode is going to be the 100th episode of TM UK! A momentous occasion, I wonder how they'll celebrate.
Victoria riding the bike was top tier enjoyment although I wonder how she thinks people have been stopping as she hasn't discovered the wonder of breaks yet LOL
"Life is not a mystery to solve, but a reality to be experienced" - Dune. But we can all be suspended in a moment together, experiencing the chaotic fun of people playing Taskmaster puzzle games!
Would it have killed Greg to give Victoria a bonus point for learning to ride a bike while doing the task? I doubt anyone would have argued against it. Well done Victoria!
Wonderful episode, I watched it the other day a few times over, it's depressing to me that Morgana has fallen behind so far, episode 1 I thought she was the Lisa Tarbuck of the series. Agreed. Nice Map.
Hey Neil, there's a podcast hosted by Ed Gamble "Taskmaster - The Podcast" can be seen/heard on RU-vid in the UK. This week is Episode 50 & has Victoria on it (so it's current) it does provide a bit of insight without giving too much away & next week has David Correos on, just thought I'd let you know...
It surprised me when Alex said he didn't think anyone could crack the code without the puzzle. There were two words that could be instantly deciphered and help fill in the rest, namely, the biggest word was obviously Taskmaster, and EOT'BB had to be a contraction ending in 'll, most likely 'you'll'. Admittedly, O = O is a bit of a curveball, but that's the kind of thing Alex would pull. :p
I think the forks task is a Taskmaster first - a task that only could've been done without the studio audience. This was definitely my favourite episode of the series so far. A good range of tasks and the riddle task is such a memorable one.
I've just found your channel. Been watching the other taskmasters. Once you get used to the video of the show going off all the time it's fun to watch. I'm sure you're doing that to stop it getting blocked. The season with rhod Gilbert is my favourite.
You are such a nice man, Neil...sorry to hear life is a bit stressy at the mo and hope it gets better very, very soon...TM brings me joy too and as a Brit it makes me glad our daft humour brings that joy elsewhere too...stay safe lovey x
During the current series of Only Connect, there have been episodes where Victoria has made very interesting outfit choices. An episode wearing pink shades, one with a very large bow in her hair, another wearing a ginger wig, another with a sparkly tattoo on her cheek. Cue lots of people on Twitter sure that it must be something to do with Taskmaster. Though the fact that the two shows air on different channels, and that Taskmaster was recorded and scored before this series of Only Connect began transmission (or possibly was even filmed), coupled with the fact the Victoria has Tweeted on more than one occasion that the two are not related... Pretty unlikely. But daft, all the same.
The fact that Taskmaster is recorded before Only Connect makes it more likely that the OC outfits WERE a subtle reference to TM, and it certainly doesn't matter about the difference in networks. In the poem she wrote about James Bond in TM ep.3 she says that "all redheads are evil", which could explain the red wig she wore on OC a few weeks before. It doesn't matter which episode of what programme she's appearing in, she's clever enough to know that WE'RE clever enough to realise that something's going on. Don't forget, her programme is called Only CONNECT, so maybe she's very subtly asking us to connect the two shows. I don't do Twitter, so did she deny all of the supposed references? The only way we can say that each OC outfit was definately nothing to do with TM is to find out if OC was recorded before TM.
@@johnboy2562 I think she explained the pink glasses away as just wanting a change or somesuch. I'm sure we'll know either way by the end of this series of Only Connect.
It was somewhat disappointing that nobody seemed to get to the core of the bike-riding task. They could have just ridden around in circles at whatever speed to start with for half an hour or more, then completed the task, and got a much better score; but they all just focused on completing the task. I guess it's maybe so ingrained in them to work on the task that they didn't really think about the time element. VCM was very much the star of the show this week though, predictably coming out on top with the cypher task, and being incredibly game for a laugh when challenged to ride a bike. Compare/contrast with Roisin Conaty who refused to get on a horse and had to have a Plan B arranged. (which was, to be fair, hilarious)
I thought - create some kind of a support system so that the bike doesn't fall over even when it stops. You'd never have to touch the ground, but there's only five minutes to put something together.
As someone that is dyspraxic, I felt for Victoria. I struggled with coordination and balance, which made riding one impossible. I have an indoor one, but always wanted to try an outdoor one as an adult as my balance is a lot better these days.
I can't be the only one who would pay good money to see David Mitchell's reactions to this series of Taskmaster (and particularly this episode). Oh to be a fly on the wall in David and Victoria's bedroom when they watch it together.
Stuff Desiree has said on Twitter made it sound like there was even more struggling with the riddle than made into the episode, with a lot of trouble trying to communicate the letters over the Walkie Talkies.
You cannot say the other team did nothing wrong in the code breaking task after we all saw guz's shit eating grin at each revelation in the lab, he knew what he was doing
I think it said you had to move in a forward direction at all times - so I think anyone who did the circles would have a fight on their hands with Greg.
While I absolutely admire Victoria's codebreaking, I feel the team of three really misses up and should have been better. But then I've played codebreaking puzzles in the Nancy Drew games, and before that when I was a child. If you have 1/3 of the letters in Roman Alphabet code, that's even better. You just look at the phrase divided up by letters and assume the most frequent concentration of three letters is "the." Then try filling in the blanks with matching letters so that t = whatever t was in the, and while h is not super common, t and e come up all the time, so this gets you things to guess at other words with. and since they gave you 1/3 of the alphabet, good odds you can figure out words like "what" as there's not too many _h_t words and you know it's not that, which then gets you an a and a w to work with if you didn't have them already ... etc. etc. from there.
They could have cycled like 30 minutes before finishing, to up the final time that was divided (well, Victoria probably would not have cycled 30min) edit : ah, the 'forward' thing.
Seeing VCM so unashamedly happy at riding a bike was priceless! The last two series have really stepped it up from a truly dire series 10, that cast just did not gel for me at all
Growing up in a small town in the 80s meant that me and all my friends lived a few streets apart and our parents would often get together and discuss what Christmas presents they were buying us all. So no surprising when one year we all got BMX bikes. We hopped on those bad boys and we'd spend hours and hours in rain and snow just learning how to do the biggest 'bunny hop' or go 'non-handed', or longest wheelie. even when we were not going anywhere we'd still be on our bikes just gently balancing them with slight back and forwards. We could do that for ages just keeping it balanced without actually going anywhere. So any kid from the 80s who had a BMX will insta know how easy it is for that bike test. Can I ask if you have a cycling proficiency test? At school around the age of 8 years old we were all taught how to ride a bike safely and took a test around a set course. Is that not a thing?
The fact that 5 of the 6 contestants are ex-Taskmaster, and 2 of those were in the same series (Jessica Knappet and Kerry Godliman) does make it easy to see that Dave are trying to fill a big hole after they lost TM.
First time watching You... Like your intelligence and your "common" knowledge...OK. it sounded pretentious. Just think, as a Swede, that you seem well-educated and open in your comments
