Thursday TV Choice: Taskmaster (Channel 4, 9pm)

So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that even American celebrities are willing to cross the Atlantic to try to impress the Taskmaster Greg Davies and his sidekick Alex Horne.

The latest line-up sees comedians Fatiha El-Ghorri and Stevie Martin, podcaster Rosie Ramsey and Ghosts star Mathew Baynton joined by actor and comedian Jason Mantzoukas, who many not be a household name on this side of the Atlantic but is certainly in demand in his native US.

Alex says “[Jason] has put his whole career on hold to do the show. There are various projects he’s doing in America but he said he’d do Taskmaster first. So, he came with a plan to make the most of it.”

Greg adds: “He was very keen to point out to me that by doing Taskmaster, he was personally operating on a massive financial loss.”

So, Jason really is just taking part for the fun of it. And it seems that while his CV includes everything from roles in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum to the sitcoms The Good Place and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, there’s nothing in the US that quite compares to Taskmaster.

He says: “I’ve done plenty of comedy in America, but we don’t have panel shows. It’s not a common format here and when Americans have tried to do them, they’ve not worked. They’ve always not quite captured what’s fun about them, or they don’t have quite the same juice or energy as the UK ones.

“But I’m friends with a bunch of people like Aisling Bea and Nish Kumar who’ve done Taskmaster so I knew about it.”

He then started watching the show on YouTube and was quickly hooked. “There seemed to me to be a camaraderie on Taskmaster, and a true joy in setting each other up to fail, poking and prodding each other and celebrating everybody.

“So I thought, not only am I enjoying this as a viewer, but now it’s piqued my interest. I thought I would like to be inside the show. And truly, I just asked. I had my manager reach out to the producers and say, ‘Would you be interested?’”

It turns out that yes, they would. Maybe they were flattered to be approached, but maybe they also thought that Jason would be a great addition to this particular line-up.

Jason certainly thinks the contestants have gelled. He says: “I thought I might be the most chaotic and mischievous contestant, only to find that I had an equally outrageous and bombastic person seated directly on my right, in Fatiha, which was an absolute delight.

“They did such a good job casting the ensemble, because everybody’s great. Everybody’s a home run. We all had such complimentary personalities and comedic points of view.”

We’ll get our first glimpse of those points of view in this opening episode as Greg finds out how they cope with vinegar, raisins and peas.