More than the Taskmasters themselves, the face of the show are often the Taskmaster’s assistants. That’s not a coincidence though as originally Taskmaster was created by (Little) Alex Horne, the assistant to Taskmaster Greg Davies.
There are a lot of great assistants and many of them have become fan favourites. A few notable mentions are Alex Horne (UK), Paul Williams (New Zealand), Tom Cashman (Australia), Diederik Smit (Netherlands) and Olli Wermskog (Norway).
A lot of the aforementioned assistants play a very similar role: they are there to set the task, banter with the contestants and sometimes help them out when asked or bribed. But they still play the role of a rather objective and distant character.
That’s why Taskmaster Estonia’s (known as Kuninga Käsul) assistant Marta Laan is such a breath of fresh air. She has become one of my favourites through her excitement and positive attitude. While she remains mostly objective in that she doesn’t have favourites, she’s always cheering the constants, sometimes giving them advice and she has a very positive relationship with all five of them.
That excitement is contagious to me as a viewer. The show’s premise is more on entertainment than any kind of real competition so it doesn’t present any sort of problem like it might in a more serious competition. While I enjoy the bickering between contestants and assistant in the UK or NZ editions, I hope we’ll see more of Marta Laan style assistants in the future as well.