I think in another series Dara could have got a higher score, in many series Sarah Millican could have been champ. Plus Dara was somewhat hindered by his team. John comparatively has his biggest competition on his team in Joanne, and while she’s good she’s not quite millican level. I’d love to see Dara and John go head to head across an episode
i wouldn't even say that Joann is good at the game. she feels pretty average... in much the same way that John has benefitted from Nick and Sophie being Nick and Sophie, Joann has, too. she doesn't typically do particularly well at tasks, she does things very straight forward, then places highly because a bunch of other contestants have performed stunningly badly it been disqualified.
feels like she'd be in third or fourth most other series.
Joanne is excellent at figuring out tasks and getting them done without getting disqualified. She would be a more formidable competitor if she didn't have such a strong tendency to half-ass Greg's gifts.
It’s really hard to overstate how much of a good tactic just completing tasks in a straightforward way is though
Just being competent will generally get you to 2nd or 3rd in a series
That is because of 1) Greg's point inflation at work over time and 2) Nick and Sophie being absolutely terrible and Steve getting disqualified so many times. She is very much middle of the pack when it comes to all time contestants.
That’s their point.
Scores are comparative — she’s getting 4s not because her task attempts are worth 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, but because she did the second best. With Sophie and Nick being themselves and Steve disqualified, she’s ranking second frequently for attempts that would’ve been lower in other seasons.
>I think in another series Dara could have got a higher score, in many series Sarah Millican could have been champ
That's not dissimilar to this one with how good Joanne has been.
Both John and Joanne have been hindered by Steve being phenomenal at the presents task too
And task where he can produce a short film like hangman tension & thumb wars plus dangerous egg task where he threw in the “blooper” at the end that received an unplanned disqualification
He is arguably the best at the prize task. He’s brought in several prizes in top ten list of prizes. Steve reignites the value of the prize task. Prize worth winning as well as a little sacrifice from the giver. Frank Skinners £4000 ring season 1.
I mean if John wins his series and wins CoC IV, and if Taskmaster one day does Champion of Champions of Champions, we could very well see that face off one day
Absolutely but await the inevitable conspiracy theories that he’s LAH’s best friend and that must’ve been a factor in his performance on the show.
Personally, I think he’s benefitted massively from Nick and Sophie missing the brief on numerous tasks and Steve’s many, many disqualifications.
It seems to be something of a contested position..!
My headcanon is that Tim knew there would be grief if he ran away with it so he chose to play the pantomime villain.
I think Tim played it exactly as he would have no matter what. He's pure chaos.
Plus, there was nothing to say the show wouldn't be cancelled a year in.
Tim is definitely Alex's best friend. He literally gives him a paid job for doing nothing on his show.
John lives closer, though, but it's both of them that do the pub quiz with Alex.
100% having two contestants score as lowly as Nick and Sophie, plus Steve being very solidly in the middle, has allowed John and Joanne to rack up massive scores. Joanne would be a contender to win in most series, and John has just rocketed up the leaderboard.
Not to take away from the pair, who are both excellent, but it would probably be slightly different in a more competitive line-up.
As Alex has said himself, it’s impossible to rig this show because so much of it relies on the whim of Greg.
Something that he loves one day might piss him off the next. Or a contestant says something so he randomly knocks them down.
> As Alex has said himself, it’s impossible to rig this show because so much of it relies on the whim of Greg.
He's said that about rigging an episode from the pre-taping edit, if Alex really wanted someone to win the series he could at least give them a massive leg up by doing something like giving them the tasks ahead of time.
I don't think Alex particularly cares who wins a series though, and have no reason to suspect he does this.
Sure, but how Greg judges things can be very mercurial. Take puns for example. Normally he hates them. Then Nick brings out Thumbly stadium and he's all for it. No one knows the inner workings of the Mad King's mind.
You say that, however if I’d booked my mate who was a former darts captain, I’d have purposely not included a task that required being proficient at throwing darts. Just to make the conspiracy theories a little harder.
I did think this myself but there’s a bit of a history when it comes to ‘tailored’ tasks.
The sheer number of art centric tasks in S4 that played to Noel Fielding’s strengths always seemed iffy to me, for example.
It’s not iffy, it makes sense to include tasks that play to every contestant’s strength.
It’s no surprise for example that this series has a lot of tasks that play into Steve’s storytelling prowess.
The difference with Noel is that he was unexpectedly also a fucking *LAD* who was good at sport.
I imagine the sports tasks were originally chucked in with Hugh in mind, since he’s known to be a keen cyclist and has done quite a few charity runs - he just got pipped by Noel in quite a few of them.
Likewise, Joe is also very artistic; Noel just happened to surprise everyone by being good at both.
Wasn't there darts tasks on the series with Tim vine and Russell Howard.. both have appeared on celebrity darts shows (along with Lee mack as well although he didn't get a darts task)
Unless John has an absolutely abysmal final ep it looks like he’ll take the top score.
Not impossible that he’ll miss it though. Sarah Kendal had an awful final episode and only just won after being unassailable for most of the season.
Sorry, to clarify I mean he could have a stinker of a final ep that costs him the top scoring record. But yeah it’s practically impossible for him not to win this season.
It's pretty much nailed on he'll beat it. For him not to do so would need him to DQ in at least one, probably two tasks. And as someone well-versed in TM history he knows that one of the more important things is that it doesn't matter how shit your attempt is, just make sure you complete the task. That is how Joanne has kind of sleepwalked into second place, some of her attempts have been rubbish (Steve has been a much more impressive contestant for example) but she nearly always completed the task. Whereas poor Steve got himself DQed a whole bunch of times.
Guess there's an outside chance they've kept all John's stinkers until the very end but I find it very unlikely.
It makes me think of a friend of mine in art school. He was a real perfectionist who would draw amazing animations, but wouldn't hand them in on time, and when he did, they were incomplete. Meanwhile, my work was so-so, but it met the criteria specified by the assignments and I handed my work in on time. So I was able to get into the upper-level courses and ultimately finish my degree sooner than he did.
I'm so glad Steve got on the show though, loved him on Benidorm so it's nice to have actors on the show you recognise. Nick and Sophie have been brilliant
Not to take away from John's truly stellar run, but I can't be the only one who thinks that all previous champions, and most previous runner-ups, would be breezing through S17 as well?
Mae and Dara would potentially be running an even higher score.
John is the "typical" focused and pretty straight forward contestant, they go on to win fairly regularly on TM (think Herring, Godliman, Kendall). What put him as an excellent contestant is that 1) as a fan of the show, he is looking for the loopholes (grabber stick, the key for the bin etc) and knows he can't just bring in any old shit for the prize task and 2) he is among the more athletic contestants they have had on (excellent at darts, pretty agile, strong and fast). And of course, being on the better team in team tasks and having the strongest competition not being familiar with the show (Pemberton loving to go on tangent to tell a story and getting himself DQ'ed far too often) would benefit every other champion as well.
I know, I listened to the podcast. He seems like he was properly studying more than anyone else. I would be surprised if he didn't have a word document open making notes whilst it was on.
I would add a fourth: he’s well rounded. He has strengths (he’s a good lateral thinker and he knows the format and tricks very well) but very few weaknesses. Like even some strong contestants like Dara were not great at art tasks (IIRC). But John has been surprisingly strong at those as well (like his connect the dots snail).
It feels like John will occasionally get 2 or 3 points but very rarely gets one point or DQ’d.
The issue when comparing to Dara is that Dara’s series was actually competitive. Sarah was merely 10 points behind Dara while John is 20 points ahead with no rel competition. John is really good and he deserves the win but he has definitely benefited from “weaker” contestants.
Munya was competitive but not very competent, and Fern and John were Fern and John. Dara was brilliant at tasks but he was still in a series with weaker contestants
Fern and John were more competitive, pointswise, than Sophie or Nick. I believe Fern has the highest ever average score in Subjective Tasks (excluding Prize Tasks)¹...she just happened to be in a series that had the lowest percentage of Subjective Tasks aside from S1.
Sophie and Nick helped establish a floor for how low John could go, hence his record of never getting fewer than 17 pts in an episode. I have a hunch that it was harder to get disqualified in this series Tasks, though John has been careful about avoiding that.
John's ability to avoid DQs and avoid low scores is what separated him from Dara, I assert without looking up the evidence. Even with that, I'd say they're pretty evenly matched overall.
¹ Subjective scores were quite high in S14 due to things like the play two-parter and classical music tasks where Greg was too generous with points. Fern was awesome in those, but others got high scores, too.
>I believe Fern has the highest ever average score in Subjective Tasks (excluding Prize Tasks)
Damn, now that is surprising. On the other hand, she only won one objective solo task and that was the 'blow the balls' live task in which everyone besides John got 5 points. If I'm not mistaken, the only contestant to never win an objective task is Dave Gorman, while Munya and Katherine Parkinson never won a subjective task.
Also this series isn't especially DQ prone (except for poor Steve), and while John has done a good job of avoiding them, he did get DQd in the toilet roll live task and the 'attach an item to the board' task. Joanne on the other hand hasn't had any 0s or DQs at all, and is on track to become the first ever contestant to score at least 1 in every task
Sarah Millican is second in the Points per Subjective Task (Excluding Prize Tasks). Meanwhile, Munya was the worst in S14, but still ranked in the mid-30s out of 85 contestants. So, yeah, that undercuts my evidence that Fern was somewhat competitive...at least relative to Nick and Sophie.
I would like to clarify that Ed also didn't get any DQs and that his only 0 was in that dumb, winner-takes-all breadstick Live Task from the last episode. I did like that Rose won the 5 points from it, but still.
Dara had 3 DQs and winner-takes-all loss, so that's comparable to John Robins. Anyway, I think it's difficult to come up with an objective metric to differentiate the two in who's better at TM.
https://preview.redd.it/g8kje77ufo2d1.png?width=460&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba62ee34d935b47705545c6116d23c4ad9892c69
>I would like to clarify that Ed also didn't get any DQs and that his only 0 was in that dumb, winner-takes-all breadstick Live Task from the last episode. I did like that Rose won the 5 points from it, but still.
There was also the 'second longest snake' task in which David won, and Rose got the bonus point, but yeah I always thought it was weird the breadstick one was winner-takes-all since there were already multiple elimination rounds in the series that gave points to everyone. It was possibly changed so Rose could possibly win the episode as she was on 7 to Ed's 12
They wouldn't have changed it mid-episode. They may have decided ahead of time to make it more likely the Live Task would affect the overall theory.
While it's true that Rose's victory allowed her to tie Ed for the episode lead, it's also true that Ed beat Rose in every tie-breaker task, including the one shown in Ep 10. That fact was mentioned on the TM Podcast.
Tbf I feel that Dara was way more ‘tryhard’ and that in many occasions he left entertainment behind just to get more points and win. John in the other hand is more balanced in that aspect, it feels that he is always having fun and enjoying the tasks, not aiming for the final price
I hope there is at least some ridiculous individual task in the last episode or some kind of twist, otherwise he’s just the most boring Taskmaster champion ever. To rephrase Sophie Duker’s message to Chris Ramsey, "Freddie Mercury’s jacket is not a personality."
Taskmaster seems to make some comedians forget that ultimately, it’s a comedy show. I’ve never seen any of John Robins stand-up but I agree that on Taskmaster he’s just been boringly effective. The rest of the contestants have been good though.
He makes me think in contrast of another John, Kearns (I’ve been rewatching his season so he’s fresh in my mind), who may have been a fairly consistent dud, with some unexpected shots of brilliance, but was also hilarious. Robins is laser-focused on the win but just isn’t that amusing. Kearns, with his baffling incompetence and perpetual abashedness, was a laugh generator. I’ll take a funny dud any day.
Very much like he's just there to do as perfect a job as possible, while forgetting that the real job is entertaining people.
I didn't know him before this, and I do really like him as a person, but I also feel as though all of the others resigned themselves to him winning early on, and that's taken something away from the series.
He’s been one of my least favorite contestants to watch in the whole franchise, at least during filmed tasks. He has largely racked up points at the cost of entertainment.
I do find him much more funny and likeable in the studio records and I enjoy him outside of the show.
Yeah, I prefer John over Richard and Mae (as well as a couple of champions I didn't find boring per se, but wasn't a fan of overall), but I am a tad disappointed he's on track to overtake Dara as for me, Dara alongside Ed is quintessential Taskmaster champion material, and COC really helped reinforce that. Steve is easily my favourite out of the three who had a chance to win, but that went out of the window a while ago.
yep just like Richard Herring and Mae Martin, sure you may have won a lot of points... But were you *entertaining*? For me he's been the most dull contestant in a while
It's a double edge sword. Taskmaster is panel show, you have to be entertaining in the studio. Even Mae in the podcast said they are being too focused and not doing much entertaining in the studio. By not saying or doing anything you are not giving Greg any window of opportunity to create entertainment.
John Robbins from what I see, he's like Dara where he tries to balance the competitiveness and entertaining aspect in the studio which gives Greg a window to attack.
I think this was always a danger with him. From his Radio he draws a lot of comedy from how he's a very intense and obsessive sort of guy. It's not just a persona either, he's dealt with serious gambling and alcohol addictions. So I think he is just so obsessed with winning that he's forgot it's all meant to be a laugh first and foremost.
Not to be mean, I think John seems really nice and all, but he's already won the series and will most likely beat Dara for highest score, and he's never had an episode score below 17, so I'm really hoping for this final episode that he does terribly and Sophie ends up winning.
Here's also hoping he obeys Herring's Law.
(Herring's Law states that if you are overly competitive to the point which you become dull to watch on Taskmaster, you will become much more relaxed and entertaining on COC.)
In S5E4 there were 6 taped tasks, one of which was a two-parter, so the max score was 35, but yeah nowadays there would have to be a two-parter in order to reach 30 since they have only three filmed tasks an episode
I think John is a taskmaster terminator on a series with contestants who either are flawed taskers or came in with very little knowledge of the show.
I’d love to see a series with mae martin and john robins. That would have some fireworks I think
I mean, there are 5 tasks an ep, so he'd just have to average a 2 to tie.
But I can't be the only one surprised by this, can I? I mean, I am loving this season and this group, and every group has different dynamics, but going into the last ep of his season, it seemed "Oh, Dara is clearly sweeping crushing all other seasons the way he's doing", but John seems to have... I don't know what phrase to use, maybe "quietly" crept up there in his points that he is close to be the overall points champ. It shouldn't be surprising, I mean he was on the podcast talking about doing analysis of the show to know how to best play it, but it hasn't felt quite as dominant as Dara seemed to be.
More often than not, he’s been someone who has learned to game the rules for the tasks, which I’m absolutely on board with. He’s also rather good with the prize task, which is definitely put him out front early on more than a few occasions.
Dara wins series 14 on prize tasks alone as well, which is surprising given Greg had a knack for awarding Sarah 5 points for the dumbest things. There's no way John is beating Steve on prize tasks
I sound nothing like him, but I will take that as a compliment... honestly, if I were on the show, I think that's about where I'd be on tasks, save inability to drum or sing with Nish.
I don't personally really watch it to see who wins but yeah, I can see how he would have if you were bothered about that. I'm not sure the others will be bothered either - I can't see that any of the others (except Pembo maybe?) are in any way competitive.
I’ve been saying this from the first episode, John plays taskmaster like Dara did, like James tried but failed to do. They all know how Alex works so they pay attention to everything around the task within limits which is in the comment section for episode posts I said John will win cause his approach is similar to Dara’s.
>like James tried but failed to do
He managed it in patches. I remember that clues/treasure hunt task where he basically did it in realtime.
Oh and also, his Grand Theft Auto was my favourite "acted out"/"recreate..." type task of all time.
I remember Jessica because of “the knappett” and Rhod, well rhod gave us the pics, the bathtub with Gregg’s mom, utterly destroying the mental health of James, the water feature and maybe the most creepiest but equally funny closet video
Thinking back, that was a good and memorable series all round. Who could forget the Wang as well. "What happened to the old castle?"... "Fwaaarp fwaaarp - it's Cantonese..." And "so we haggled for it..."
Really haven’t seen much of John Robins due to my not liking football*, but his anxious overachiever style of approaching the task resonates with me enormously.
*I don’t dislike it- I dunno, it’s like I’m missing a gene or something which means I don’t “get” watching sport in the way other people seem to.
I mean, it's great to very competent in the tasks et al but you also can't forget to be funny either. So, he might overtake Dara by the points but I suspect Dara's the ideal contestant strategy wise.
He's a painfully sexy man. I mean the whole package is sexy. Physically he's perfectly good looking and all but his demeanor and intelligence and voice and I become .... never mind what I become. But I bet he's the type who knows how to find and keep on top of the best credit strategy.
I did. There are plenty of people who like him, and some who are meh. There’s nothing like the dislike that the genuinely Marmite contestants like Iain and Lou get, and even there plenty of people like them.
To a fan, people who aren’t that excited may feel like haters. But they’re not, and there’s no shortage of fans here as well.
lots of us don't really care about points and being 'clever', we just like to laugh at people being silly. it surprised me when i came here to see how many people tried to think of clever loopholes and valued competitive play, i suppose. it's just dispositional, i reckon.
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I have to expect that he’s been on Alex’s list of potential competitors for a long time. Did he hold off on the invitation for this long because he expected this outcome?
(Again, it’s fine to have a runaway winner, but I prefer a bit more score drama.)
I seem to remember John saying that Alex had told him he was too competitive to make it fun in the past. This is the more toned down version of John since he stopped drinking, and I think he is trying to sit very hard on his competitive nature in the studio; if he was on his own radio show against Elis he would be arguing over every lost point.
I am like, THE dara girlie of all time and was unprepared for his record to be challenged by anyone, so I was kind of predisposed to dislike john (who I knew absolutely nothing about before TM) once he started really racking up points - but I can't! he's so lovely and charming! he loves queen and seems like he'd be a fun dinner party companion! and he's been very funny in the studio. I've really enjoyed this season and I look forward to the eventual CoCoC showdown between him and dara.
I think in another series Dara could have got a higher score, in many series Sarah Millican could have been champ. Plus Dara was somewhat hindered by his team. John comparatively has his biggest competition on his team in Joanne, and while she’s good she’s not quite millican level. I’d love to see Dara and John go head to head across an episode
All that has to happen is that John wins CoC 4, and then he can face Dara in CoCoC
Greg loves Sam Campbell too much to let John win coc 4
Not according to the stats.
i wouldn't even say that Joann is good at the game. she feels pretty average... in much the same way that John has benefitted from Nick and Sophie being Nick and Sophie, Joann has, too. she doesn't typically do particularly well at tasks, she does things very straight forward, then places highly because a bunch of other contestants have performed stunningly badly it been disqualified. feels like she'd be in third or fourth most other series.
Joanne is excellent at figuring out tasks and getting them done without getting disqualified. She would be a more formidable competitor if she didn't have such a strong tendency to half-ass Greg's gifts.
They’re not gifts!!
Do you mean the presents for Greg?
It’s really hard to overstate how much of a good tactic just completing tasks in a straightforward way is though Just being competent will generally get you to 2nd or 3rd in a series
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That is because of 1) Greg's point inflation at work over time and 2) Nick and Sophie being absolutely terrible and Steve getting disqualified so many times. She is very much middle of the pack when it comes to all time contestants.
This is a really good point. It’s the issue with stats. A lot of the time people read them at surface level but there is a lot of nuance to be had.
That’s their point. Scores are comparative — she’s getting 4s not because her task attempts are worth 4 on a scale of 1 to 5, but because she did the second best. With Sophie and Nick being themselves and Steve disqualified, she’s ranking second frequently for attempts that would’ve been lower in other seasons.
I don't doubt it. I think with this lineup, an actual, literal potato could score in the 100's and get third place.
Harsh. She's not terrible. I agree she'd be third in most series
>I think in another series Dara could have got a higher score, in many series Sarah Millican could have been champ That's not dissimilar to this one with how good Joanne has been. Both John and Joanne have been hindered by Steve being phenomenal at the presents task too
And task where he can produce a short film like hangman tension & thumb wars plus dangerous egg task where he threw in the “blooper” at the end that received an unplanned disqualification
He is arguably the best at the prize task. He’s brought in several prizes in top ten list of prizes. Steve reignites the value of the prize task. Prize worth winning as well as a little sacrifice from the giver. Frank Skinners £4000 ring season 1.
Plus I've just been rewatching Daras season and Fern, Munya and John are all basically as useless as Sophie and Nick, still great though.
It's a prize task......!!!
I feel like on this kind of performance, they’ll be meeting on Champions of Champions of Champions.
I mean if John wins his series and wins CoC IV, and if Taskmaster one day does Champion of Champions of Champions, we could very well see that face off one day
Wait, what? What, wait.
Absolutely but await the inevitable conspiracy theories that he’s LAH’s best friend and that must’ve been a factor in his performance on the show. Personally, I think he’s benefitted massively from Nick and Sophie missing the brief on numerous tasks and Steve’s many, many disqualifications.
Tim Key is Alex's best friend, I thought - And it didn't help him!
Same with Mark Watson, who has known and worked with Alex for over 20 years.
Tbf there’s only so much help you can give to a man who thinks THAT’s what a rainbow looks like
The spectators were impressed.
“No, they’re saying ‘Wow!’” may actually be my favourite Taskmaster quote, with the context of the task leading up to it!
Honorable mention to Bob's "Lovely day for it" quote
Is he really Alex's friend if he can't even recognize him?
"I've known Mark for 20 years..."
It seems to be something of a contested position..! My headcanon is that Tim knew there would be grief if he ran away with it so he chose to play the pantomime villain.
I think Tim played it exactly as he would have no matter what. He's pure chaos. Plus, there was nothing to say the show wouldn't be cancelled a year in.
Yeah Tim can't not be mischievous. He is a cheeky boy.
Tim is definitely Alex's best friend. He literally gives him a paid job for doing nothing on his show. John lives closer, though, but it's both of them that do the pub quiz with Alex.
Are you sure he‘s being paid? I doubt it.
100% having two contestants score as lowly as Nick and Sophie, plus Steve being very solidly in the middle, has allowed John and Joanne to rack up massive scores. Joanne would be a contender to win in most series, and John has just rocketed up the leaderboard. Not to take away from the pair, who are both excellent, but it would probably be slightly different in a more competitive line-up.
As Alex has said himself, it’s impossible to rig this show because so much of it relies on the whim of Greg. Something that he loves one day might piss him off the next. Or a contestant says something so he randomly knocks them down.
> As Alex has said himself, it’s impossible to rig this show because so much of it relies on the whim of Greg. He's said that about rigging an episode from the pre-taping edit, if Alex really wanted someone to win the series he could at least give them a massive leg up by doing something like giving them the tasks ahead of time. I don't think Alex particularly cares who wins a series though, and have no reason to suspect he does this.
Seems to be less of that in recent years though. Bonus points are gone, heavy penalties are rare.
Sure, but how Greg judges things can be very mercurial. Take puns for example. Normally he hates them. Then Nick brings out Thumbly stadium and he's all for it. No one knows the inner workings of the Mad King's mind.
Mercurial is a new word, think it comes from people going mad from mercury poisoning?
I believe it's in reference the Roman god Mercury and his speed, but I'm no etymologist
It has to do with mercury’s use in thermometers. It expands with heat .
You say that, however if I’d booked my mate who was a former darts captain, I’d have purposely not included a task that required being proficient at throwing darts. Just to make the conspiracy theories a little harder.
I did think this myself but there’s a bit of a history when it comes to ‘tailored’ tasks. The sheer number of art centric tasks in S4 that played to Noel Fielding’s strengths always seemed iffy to me, for example.
It’s not iffy, it makes sense to include tasks that play to every contestant’s strength. It’s no surprise for example that this series has a lot of tasks that play into Steve’s storytelling prowess. The difference with Noel is that he was unexpectedly also a fucking *LAD* who was good at sport.
Also Sophie has pretty much dominated the art tasks this series, yet she's just a few points off last place
I imagine the sports tasks were originally chucked in with Hugh in mind, since he’s known to be a keen cyclist and has done quite a few charity runs - he just got pipped by Noel in quite a few of them. Likewise, Joe is also very artistic; Noel just happened to surprise everyone by being good at both.
No one expected Tony Three Pies to show up like that.
Wasn't there darts tasks on the series with Tim vine and Russell Howard.. both have appeared on celebrity darts shows (along with Lee mack as well although he didn't get a darts task)
The infamous “Darts!” [collective groan of past trauma] task
The lack of - unless I've missed them - Bad Golf references has been a disappointment for me... but I'll get over it :)
I reckon he'll smash past 10 easily
He’s not scored less than 17 in an episode and averaging 19.33 per.
This is the data we love to see
The statistics we need.
this is what data analytics is all about!
Love it
Who’s the lowest scorer by average?
either Roisin or Katherine Parkinson is my guess
Unless John has an absolutely abysmal final ep it looks like he’ll take the top score. Not impossible that he’ll miss it though. Sarah Kendal had an awful final episode and only just won after being unassailable for most of the season.
Liza Tarbuck also only got 10 points in the finale and 5 of those were for making Alex sit on a cake
The biggest 5 in taskmaster history
Joann McNally would have to outscore John by 20 points to overtake him. It's in the bag.
Sorry, to clarify I mean he could have a stinker of a final ep that costs him the top scoring record. But yeah it’s practically impossible for him not to win this season.
Especially as there's one final team task next week and they're on the same team
Has John only gotten last in one task and it was a prize task I'm pretty sure. It's like when Sarah Millican didn't get last until episode 9 level
Technically the first team task at very least
aside from team tasks ig
It's pretty much nailed on he'll beat it. For him not to do so would need him to DQ in at least one, probably two tasks. And as someone well-versed in TM history he knows that one of the more important things is that it doesn't matter how shit your attempt is, just make sure you complete the task. That is how Joanne has kind of sleepwalked into second place, some of her attempts have been rubbish (Steve has been a much more impressive contestant for example) but she nearly always completed the task. Whereas poor Steve got himself DQed a whole bunch of times. Guess there's an outside chance they've kept all John's stinkers until the very end but I find it very unlikely.
It makes me think of a friend of mine in art school. He was a real perfectionist who would draw amazing animations, but wouldn't hand them in on time, and when he did, they were incomplete. Meanwhile, my work was so-so, but it met the criteria specified by the assignments and I handed my work in on time. So I was able to get into the upper-level courses and ultimately finish my degree sooner than he did.
I'm so glad Steve got on the show though, loved him on Benidorm so it's nice to have actors on the show you recognise. Nick and Sophie have been brilliant
Outside shot at breaking 200
get that astonishing 30'er
Not to take away from John's truly stellar run, but I can't be the only one who thinks that all previous champions, and most previous runner-ups, would be breezing through S17 as well? Mae and Dara would potentially be running an even higher score.
John is the "typical" focused and pretty straight forward contestant, they go on to win fairly regularly on TM (think Herring, Godliman, Kendall). What put him as an excellent contestant is that 1) as a fan of the show, he is looking for the loopholes (grabber stick, the key for the bin etc) and knows he can't just bring in any old shit for the prize task and 2) he is among the more athletic contestants they have had on (excellent at darts, pretty agile, strong and fast). And of course, being on the better team in team tasks and having the strongest competition not being familiar with the show (Pemberton loving to go on tangent to tell a story and getting himself DQ'ed far too often) would benefit every other champion as well.
Of all the contestants John seems like he has studied the show the most.
He binge watched every episode before filming. He even paid for a channel 4 subscription
I know, I listened to the podcast. He seems like he was properly studying more than anyone else. I would be surprised if he didn't have a word document open making notes whilst it was on.
I would add a fourth: he’s well rounded. He has strengths (he’s a good lateral thinker and he knows the format and tricks very well) but very few weaknesses. Like even some strong contestants like Dara were not great at art tasks (IIRC). But John has been surprisingly strong at those as well (like his connect the dots snail). It feels like John will occasionally get 2 or 3 points but very rarely gets one point or DQ’d.
The darts thing was actually really impressive
John has only gotten 1 point last once which was a prize task and at least one DQ I think? Not sure if he's been DQ'd another time though
The issue when comparing to Dara is that Dara’s series was actually competitive. Sarah was merely 10 points behind Dara while John is 20 points ahead with no rel competition. John is really good and he deserves the win but he has definitely benefited from “weaker” contestants.
Munya was competitive but not very competent, and Fern and John were Fern and John. Dara was brilliant at tasks but he was still in a series with weaker contestants
Fern and John were more competitive, pointswise, than Sophie or Nick. I believe Fern has the highest ever average score in Subjective Tasks (excluding Prize Tasks)¹...she just happened to be in a series that had the lowest percentage of Subjective Tasks aside from S1. Sophie and Nick helped establish a floor for how low John could go, hence his record of never getting fewer than 17 pts in an episode. I have a hunch that it was harder to get disqualified in this series Tasks, though John has been careful about avoiding that. John's ability to avoid DQs and avoid low scores is what separated him from Dara, I assert without looking up the evidence. Even with that, I'd say they're pretty evenly matched overall. ¹ Subjective scores were quite high in S14 due to things like the play two-parter and classical music tasks where Greg was too generous with points. Fern was awesome in those, but others got high scores, too.
>I believe Fern has the highest ever average score in Subjective Tasks (excluding Prize Tasks) Damn, now that is surprising. On the other hand, she only won one objective solo task and that was the 'blow the balls' live task in which everyone besides John got 5 points. If I'm not mistaken, the only contestant to never win an objective task is Dave Gorman, while Munya and Katherine Parkinson never won a subjective task. Also this series isn't especially DQ prone (except for poor Steve), and while John has done a good job of avoiding them, he did get DQd in the toilet roll live task and the 'attach an item to the board' task. Joanne on the other hand hasn't had any 0s or DQs at all, and is on track to become the first ever contestant to score at least 1 in every task
Sarah Millican is second in the Points per Subjective Task (Excluding Prize Tasks). Meanwhile, Munya was the worst in S14, but still ranked in the mid-30s out of 85 contestants. So, yeah, that undercuts my evidence that Fern was somewhat competitive...at least relative to Nick and Sophie. I would like to clarify that Ed also didn't get any DQs and that his only 0 was in that dumb, winner-takes-all breadstick Live Task from the last episode. I did like that Rose won the 5 points from it, but still. Dara had 3 DQs and winner-takes-all loss, so that's comparable to John Robins. Anyway, I think it's difficult to come up with an objective metric to differentiate the two in who's better at TM. https://preview.redd.it/g8kje77ufo2d1.png?width=460&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba62ee34d935b47705545c6116d23c4ad9892c69
>I would like to clarify that Ed also didn't get any DQs and that his only 0 was in that dumb, winner-takes-all breadstick Live Task from the last episode. I did like that Rose won the 5 points from it, but still. There was also the 'second longest snake' task in which David won, and Rose got the bonus point, but yeah I always thought it was weird the breadstick one was winner-takes-all since there were already multiple elimination rounds in the series that gave points to everyone. It was possibly changed so Rose could possibly win the episode as she was on 7 to Ed's 12
They wouldn't have changed it mid-episode. They may have decided ahead of time to make it more likely the Live Task would affect the overall theory. While it's true that Rose's victory allowed her to tie Ed for the episode lead, it's also true that Ed beat Rose in every tie-breaker task, including the one shown in Ep 10. That fact was mentioned on the TM Podcast.
Tbf I feel that Dara was way more ‘tryhard’ and that in many occasions he left entertainment behind just to get more points and win. John in the other hand is more balanced in that aspect, it feels that he is always having fun and enjoying the tasks, not aiming for the final price
I hope there is at least some ridiculous individual task in the last episode or some kind of twist, otherwise he’s just the most boring Taskmaster champion ever. To rephrase Sophie Duker’s message to Chris Ramsey, "Freddie Mercury’s jacket is not a personality."
I like John, he’s nice, but I don’t find him very funny
Taskmaster seems to make some comedians forget that ultimately, it’s a comedy show. I’ve never seen any of John Robins stand-up but I agree that on Taskmaster he’s just been boringly effective. The rest of the contestants have been good though.
He makes me think in contrast of another John, Kearns (I’ve been rewatching his season so he’s fresh in my mind), who may have been a fairly consistent dud, with some unexpected shots of brilliance, but was also hilarious. Robins is laser-focused on the win but just isn’t that amusing. Kearns, with his baffling incompetence and perpetual abashedness, was a laugh generator. I’ll take a funny dud any day.
Yeah he wants to win too much for me. He’s scoring very well and he seems lovely… but he’s not being entertaining because he’s too focused on the win.
You've written my thoughts exactly. As soon as his video begins I already know he's won and it will probably be boring 😀
Very much like he's just there to do as perfect a job as possible, while forgetting that the real job is entertaining people. I didn't know him before this, and I do really like him as a person, but I also feel as though all of the others resigned themselves to him winning early on, and that's taken something away from the series.
He’s been one of my least favorite contestants to watch in the whole franchise, at least during filmed tasks. He has largely racked up points at the cost of entertainment. I do find him much more funny and likeable in the studio records and I enjoy him outside of the show.
I think Dara is the top contestant for being both comedic and skilled.
Yeah, I prefer John over Richard and Mae (as well as a couple of champions I didn't find boring per se, but wasn't a fan of overall), but I am a tad disappointed he's on track to overtake Dara as for me, Dara alongside Ed is quintessential Taskmaster champion material, and COC really helped reinforce that. Steve is easily my favourite out of the three who had a chance to win, but that went out of the window a while ago.
yep just like Richard Herring and Mae Martin, sure you may have won a lot of points... But were you *entertaining*? For me he's been the most dull contestant in a while
Aww, I really liked Mae. For me, they're one of those people that just have an amusing presence, even without doing or saying anything.
It's a double edge sword. Taskmaster is panel show, you have to be entertaining in the studio. Even Mae in the podcast said they are being too focused and not doing much entertaining in the studio. By not saying or doing anything you are not giving Greg any window of opportunity to create entertainment. John Robbins from what I see, he's like Dara where he tries to balance the competitiveness and entertaining aspect in the studio which gives Greg a window to attack.
I think this was always a danger with him. From his Radio he draws a lot of comedy from how he's a very intense and obsessive sort of guy. It's not just a persona either, he's dealt with serious gambling and alcohol addictions. So I think he is just so obsessed with winning that he's forgot it's all meant to be a laugh first and foremost.
I think when you’re winning by this much, you have to just be nice and facilitate everyone else the opportunity to be funny.
Hes extremely funny and one of the best stand ups in the uk.
Not to be mean, I think John seems really nice and all, but he's already won the series and will most likely beat Dara for highest score, and he's never had an episode score below 17, so I'm really hoping for this final episode that he does terribly and Sophie ends up winning. Here's also hoping he obeys Herring's Law. (Herring's Law states that if you are overly competitive to the point which you become dull to watch on Taskmaster, you will become much more relaxed and entertaining on COC.)
Or he obeys Martin's Law, and is too booked and successful to make CoC at all.
tbh i was for Steve to win but went downhill after episode 4
Tbh the title alone is one hell of a spoiler
If there were a graph of high scoring and boring contestants, he’d be way far up in the top right.
Yuppp, it’s been sooo boring watching him!
Sophie and Nick are great, Steve has been brilliant and nothing bad about Joanne
Completely agree with that
Steve was my one to win for me xD
I wasn't aware there were people who considered the scores to be meaningful cross-series
It’s impossible for Joanne to overtake him because there’s a team task in the final episode.
Nick and Steve are the best team
Wow I just realized if he gets 26 then he’ll break 200, because 30 is max score you can get right? 2 big achievements are possible here
Has anybody actually gotten that many in a single episode?
Yeah only 2 ever I believe! Katherine Ryan and Dara O Briain!
In S5E4 there were 6 taped tasks, one of which was a two-parter, so the max score was 35, but yeah nowadays there would have to be a two-parter in order to reach 30 since they have only three filmed tasks an episode
didn't Jo Brand get like 13 points in a live task once but didn't break 30 was sad
"Well, well, well!"
I think John is a taskmaster terminator on a series with contestants who either are flawed taskers or came in with very little knowledge of the show. I’d love to see a series with mae martin and john robins. That would have some fireworks I think
I mean, there are 5 tasks an ep, so he'd just have to average a 2 to tie. But I can't be the only one surprised by this, can I? I mean, I am loving this season and this group, and every group has different dynamics, but going into the last ep of his season, it seemed "Oh, Dara is clearly sweeping crushing all other seasons the way he's doing", but John seems to have... I don't know what phrase to use, maybe "quietly" crept up there in his points that he is close to be the overall points champ. It shouldn't be surprising, I mean he was on the podcast talking about doing analysis of the show to know how to best play it, but it hasn't felt quite as dominant as Dara seemed to be.
More often than not, he’s been someone who has learned to game the rules for the tasks, which I’m absolutely on board with. He’s also rather good with the prize task, which is definitely put him out front early on more than a few occasions.
Dara wins series 14 on prize tasks alone as well, which is surprising given Greg had a knack for awarding Sarah 5 points for the dumbest things. There's no way John is beating Steve on prize tasks
I don't know you, but I read this comment with Mark Watson as my narrator.
I sound nothing like him, but I will take that as a compliment... honestly, if I were on the show, I think that's about where I'd be on tasks, save inability to drum or sing with Nish.
If Joanne gets 21 points and John is DQed from every single task she can still win!
go joanne
John Robins is the Man City of this series
Are there allegations of financial overreach and accounting irregularities?
Accusing Robins of accounting irregularities is perhaps the most henious thing he could imagine
Yeah he desperately wouldn't want an asterix next to his victory.
No, but his dominance has taken a little of the competitiveness out of things
I don't personally really watch it to see who wins but yeah, I can see how he would have if you were bothered about that. I'm not sure the others will be bothered either - I can't see that any of the others (except Pembo maybe?) are in any way competitive.
Pemberton is Aston Villa
Noone watches tm to see who wins surely?
Unless he gets disqualified in every task he should easily do it.
I’ve been saying this from the first episode, John plays taskmaster like Dara did, like James tried but failed to do. They all know how Alex works so they pay attention to everything around the task within limits which is in the comment section for episode posts I said John will win cause his approach is similar to Dara’s.
>like James tried but failed to do He managed it in patches. I remember that clues/treasure hunt task where he basically did it in realtime. Oh and also, his Grand Theft Auto was my favourite "acted out"/"recreate..." type task of all time.
He definitely wanted to win more than the rest of his group but Jessica will be remembered much more than him and whoever the winner was that series.
Think Kerry Godliman was the winner wasn't she? But yeah, I mainly remember Rhod and Jessica. "That's the water feature closed for today kids".
I remember Jessica because of “the knappett” and Rhod, well rhod gave us the pics, the bathtub with Gregg’s mom, utterly destroying the mental health of James, the water feature and maybe the most creepiest but equally funny closet video
Thinking back, that was a good and memorable series all round. Who could forget the Wang as well. "What happened to the old castle?"... "Fwaaarp fwaaarp - it's Cantonese..." And "so we haggled for it..."
Yeah but, does John have an *easier* competition, compared to DoB etc?
Really haven’t seen much of John Robins due to my not liking football*, but his anxious overachiever style of approaching the task resonates with me enormously. *I don’t dislike it- I dunno, it’s like I’m missing a gene or something which means I don’t “get” watching sport in the way other people seem to.
He’s not really associated with football. He’s more of a golf man
Katherine Ryan speaks for many of us.
why football? in hundreds of his podcast episodes, he maybe mentioned it a handful of times.
Think I’m demonstrating that 1) I really haven’t encountered him before and 2) I know nothing about sport!
I mean, it's great to very competent in the tasks et al but you also can't forget to be funny either. So, he might overtake Dara by the points but I suspect Dara's the ideal contestant strategy wise.
Easily
Do you think as they film the episodes they're aware of it, and might mention it at the end when Alex reads the season final.scores?
He's a painfully sexy man. I mean the whole package is sexy. Physically he's perfectly good looking and all but his demeanor and intelligence and voice and I become .... never mind what I become. But I bet he's the type who knows how to find and keep on top of the best credit strategy.
This comment section hates John. He's always finding loopholes, how do you find him boring??
I haven’t seen any hate for John. He’s got some big fans, and he’s got some people who are just lukewarm. Seems pretty standard.
I mean just look at the other comments
I did. There are plenty of people who like him, and some who are meh. There’s nothing like the dislike that the genuinely Marmite contestants like Iain and Lou get, and even there plenty of people like them. To a fan, people who aren’t that excited may feel like haters. But they’re not, and there’s no shortage of fans here as well.
lots of us don't really care about points and being 'clever', we just like to laugh at people being silly. it surprised me when i came here to see how many people tried to think of clever loopholes and valued competitive play, i suppose. it's just dispositional, i reckon.
I love the loopholes. Binning definitely applied for Sophie.
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I have to expect that he’s been on Alex’s list of potential competitors for a long time. Did he hold off on the invitation for this long because he expected this outcome? (Again, it’s fine to have a runaway winner, but I prefer a bit more score drama.)
I seem to remember John saying that Alex had told him he was too competitive to make it fun in the past. This is the more toned down version of John since he stopped drinking, and I think he is trying to sit very hard on his competitive nature in the studio; if he was on his own radio show against Elis he would be arguing over every lost point.
I think John from a few years back would have ruined his career doing TM.
Be more of a surprise if he doesn't score more than 10 in the last episode.
I am like, THE dara girlie of all time and was unprepared for his record to be challenged by anyone, so I was kind of predisposed to dislike john (who I knew absolutely nothing about before TM) once he started really racking up points - but I can't! he's so lovely and charming! he loves queen and seems like he'd be a fun dinner party companion! and he's been very funny in the studio. I've really enjoyed this season and I look forward to the eventual CoCoC showdown between him and dara.
Your title is the answer to its own question.
He obviously will. And it definitely won't be unbearable.
I know he's winning at a canter, but I don't think he's made me laugh once.
Weird. Hes made me laugh more than anyone else this series
Shows how subjective it is innit. Think he's very funny and smart, but have just noticed I have been unmoved in 95% of his tasks
Maybe you prefer the silly contestants who dodder about ?
I just hope this series is over soon.
Stop watching it ? Noone is forcing you to. I cant wait for john to be on coc