{"id":351385,"date":"2026-01-04T08:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T08:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/351385\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T08:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T08:53:07","slug":"kumail-nanjiani-to-star-on-next-season-of-u-k-panel-show-taskmaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/351385\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumail Nanjiani to star on next season of U.K. panel show Taskmaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having apparently gotten a taste for Los Angeles-based comedians with last year\u2019s inclusion of Jason Mantzoukas on its roster<\/a>, British panel show Taskmaster\u00a0has now reportedly cast comic\/actor\/reformed Kingo<\/a> Kumail Nanjiani for its upcoming 21st season. Nanjiani (who\u2019s fresh off a two-episode stint on Prime Video\u2019s Fallout\u00a0TV show<\/a>) will appear on the season with a pretty stacked cast of talent, too: His fellow contestants, per Radio Times<\/a>, will be comedian Amy Gledhill, TV presenter Joel Dommett,\u00a0Gavin & Stacey\u00a0star Joanna Page, and, perhaps oddest of all, Armando Iannucci, the legendary Scottish comedy writer and director best known, Stateside, for creating Veep. (But who will always, in our mean little hearts, be the guy who brought us Malcolm Tucker and The Thick Of It.)<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

Among other things, that means this is the first\u00a0Taskmaster\u00a0season to feature not just one, but two Oscar nominees, with Iannucci and Nanjiani having both scored nods for their writing work on In The Loop<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0The Big Sick<\/a>, respectively. None of which will presumably help them in preserving their dignity as they run through the tasks set for them by series creator\/lackey Alex Horne, all to be judged by the Taskmaster himself, comedian Greg Davies. Part prank show, part panel show, and part high-impact lateral thinking challenge,\u00a0Taskmaster\u00a0has become a British (and Australian, and New Zealand) institution by steering hard into the belief that if you put funny people in extreme circumstances, and then dangle a bunch of ultimately meaningless points over their head, something pretty funny is bound to happen.<\/p>\n

News of the latest casting comes just as the series is gearing up for its latest, possibly Quixotic attempt to convince Americans that one of the planet\u2019s most consistently funny TV shows is exactly that, with Horne and Davies embarking on a United States tour that kicks off in Chicago on January 15. Meanwhile, if you just want to get caught up on the series\u2014including Mantzoukas\u2019 episodes, where he gleefully embraced his role as the show\u2019s latest engine of chaos\u2014you can check them out on YouTube, where the series\u2019 whole run remains readily available in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Having apparently gotten a taste for Los Angeles-based comedians with last year\u2019s inclusion of Jason Mantzoukas on its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-351385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}