Taken to Task

Taskmaster is back for season… four? Five? Three? Let’s say four. And you know what that means: proof positive that the format doesn’t require comedians at all wait what?

Taskmaster has traditionally featured comedians and Julia Morris because parts of the format – mostly the part where they sit around in a studio while Tom Gleeson insults them – work better with everyone cracking jokes. That doesn’t mean it works well, as anyone who soaked in all the dead air in the first episode of this seasons knows. But still, jokes: maybe we’ll get lucky.

This season tho, we have joining the cast one Lisa McCune, AKA “Australia’s sweetheart”. McCune is an actor who has been in some funny-ish shows over the years, like… Um*… That one where she was sisters with Alison Whyte from Frontline and they were lawyers or something**? And everything else we can think of it was really Lavinia Nixon on Micallef Tonight.

So far McCune has done fine. Maybe even better than fine. A big part of what makes Taskmaster work is seeing different characters deal with the tasks. Again, this is why you get in comedians: they usually come with an outsized persona that audiences are hopefully familiar with, and so people will tune in to see how they react to a whole bunch of frustrating shit.

But when you’re talking Australian comedy circa 2025, there just aren’t that many comedians people have heard of. For example, a lot of this season seems to be pushing the idea that Tommy Little is a lowbrow comedian obsessed with arse jokes. Which may very well be the case, but unless you’re following comedy a lot closer than the Taskmaster audience Tommy Little is just some guy who presumably turns up on The Project a bit.

In contrast, we have Hughesy – one of the best known comedians in the country. And yet, his act still doesn’t really work here. Dave Hughes the human being is a smart guy driven to succeed. He’s not an offbeat suburban surrealist coming up with wacky angles. Hughesy the comedian is “entertainingly” opinionated and lowbrow, the Dave Hughes competing here is not.

Presumably that contrast is entertaining for those five or so people who are peeking behind the curtain for the first time. Considering Hughes has already been on I’m a Celebrity and Australian Story this year as himself, everyone else is pretty much up to speed with the news that Hughesy isn’t much like Hughesy away from controlled comedy environments.

But McCune, being a professional actor who gets gigs in large part because she brings “Lisa McCune” energy to a role, doesn’t have these problems. We know who she is (well, the kind of roles she plays). She’s nice, she’s kind, she’s plucky, and occasionally she’s slightly befuddled. On Taskmaster, the fun comes from seeing the Lisa McCune we (think we) know tackling all kinds of wacky situations.

So when Tom Cashman asks her for the keys in a task where her job is to hide the keys from him, she’s too nice to actually keep the keys hidden and just… hands them over. It wasn’t a winning move by any stretch, but it was probably the best move in terms of pure comedy.

Which must suck a little for the comedians on the show.

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*We said “funny-ish”, which rules out How to Stay Married

**Marshall Law