Review: Taskmaster, “Supping from the fountain.” | Series 20, Episode 10

It’s the final episode of series 20 of Taskmaster, with contestants Ania Magliano, who looks like she dresses like a pirate every weekend; Maisie Adam, who looks more like an elf than a pirate; Phil Ellis, who, contrary to Taskmaster Greg Davies’ quip, is upsettingly pretty with long hair; Reece Shearsmith, who pulls off a beautiful curly Hook wig; and Sanjeev Bhaskar, who should probably not grow a mustache. 

I have to apologize for my math last week, gently pointed out by commenter Kael Driscoll. I’d added the mid-episode series score to the episode scores at the end, not realizing they didn’t account for the studio task. So Magliano and Ellis were tied coming into this episode, making the season ending even more of a twist. Although I’ve enjoyed this season overall — can you really have a bad season of Taskmaster? — there really was a dearth of lateral thinking. But the upshot is that it was anyone’s game by the end.

The Prize Task

• The final prize task is to bring in the very best tube. Of course Bhaskar used it as an excuse to bring in another jar of piss, and Ellis an excuse to bring in a tube of lube, but Adam’s Tube car of tube pasta was quite fun.
• Very happy to see Magliano bring back the paternity joke for the final episode with her tube of Greg’s DNA. Not least because it let her quip later in the show that Davies “is the father who left me, and Sanjeev is the father who raised me.”

The Other Tasks

• The first task, the final team task of the season, is to make exactly the same-looking drinks as your teammates’ drinks. Your entire team may only open two doors. Coming into this episode, I would have been just a little bit annoyed if Ellis had won, because he’s been more of a goof than a player. But this! Pouring half the drinks into the empty mugs was a stroke of genius, and some beautiful lateral thinking. In that moment, I would have been completely fine if he’d won. Even Little Alex Horne confessed in the studio that he hadn’t foreseen that solution (“Very frustrating”). Truly the highest compliment. 
• Bhaskar got his entire team disqualified thanks to his puttering around the kitchen, opening cabinets. That meant that Adam and Shearsmith won this task, and honestly I’m just glad that Adam’s retching was not for naught. 
• The second task is to drink almost all the apple juice. You may not touch the cup, and the cup may not move. Both Shearsmith and Bhaskar impressed me with knowledge of Pythagoras beyond “there’s a geometry theorem named for him.” And Bhaskar, just calmly whipping out Bernoulli’s principle as though he was asking for a cup of tea!  
• I did not enjoy watching anybody drink apple juice from what was clearly a (presumably unused) litter box. 

• Dr. Displacement won this task in a cool 45 seconds, with Ellis coming in last at nearly 15 minutes. 
• The third task is to make water squirt out of you in a surprising way … Alex will guess whence the water will squirt. For every incorrect guess, you may squirt him for one second at the end of the task. Longest time squirting Alex wins. (Bhaskar: “That shouldn’t even be a sentence.”)

• Not a loser among them, even if Magliano only made LAH guess eight times before getting it right. But in terms of sheer style, Bhaskar was of course the clear winner — the tape over his mouth and the silent nodding really sold it for me. “Flanks? Flanks?” 

• My notes say, in all capital letters, SQUIRT MONTAGE. Ellis wins the task thanks to the sheer number of hose endings adorned on his body. 
• In a Taskmaster first, the series ended with a three-way tie among Adam, Magliano, and Ellis, forcing a tie-breaker task in the studio. The task was to count the number of T’s in the painting of Davies and LAH, which was anticlimactic but it worked for me, because it put them all on even playing ground. It was just anybody’s lucky guess. And in this case, it was Maisie Adam, who looked rather surprised or confused to be the winner of Taskmaster season 20! Even though she wasn’t a frontrunner most of the season, she was arguably the most competitive, so I’m happy she won. She’ll be fun on a future Champion of Champions, too.

Elsewhere in the Taskmaster extended universe

All of Maisie Adam’s predictions:

 Also, the contestants for the two-episode New Year’s Treat special have been announced: TV chef Big Zuu, former footballer Jill Scott, EastEnders’ Rose Ayling-Ellis, Eurovision 2022 runner-up Sam Ryder, and lexicographer Susie Dent. Ayling-Ellis is Deaf, and I’m excited to see how the producers make it accessible for her — this is not a show that particularly lends itself to accessibility, so I appreciate it when they make the effort. 

Until next time: With apologies for getting the final review up so late; I got a foster puppy yesterday, and she has taken up all of my weekend and then some. No word yet on any details of S21 of Taskmaster, but I imagine we’ll get cast announcements early in 2026. I’m excited about this one in part because it will be (I think) the first cast that will have seen Jason “Destroy, Dismantle, Engulf in Flames” Mantzoukas’ season. It could be that no British contestant could ever be as destructive as Mantzoukas … or it could be that suddenly a lot of contestants will be trying to get on the roof.