Taskmaster (Dave, 10pm)

FILLING an egg cup with tears. Making a Swedish man blush. Painting a picture of a horse, while riding on one. These are just some of the bizarre and ridiculous tasks that feature in new Dave game show Taskmaster, in which comedians Frank Skinner, Roisin Conaty, Romesh Ranganathan, Tim Key and Josh Widdicombe compete to win each other's belongings.

Fellow comic Greg Davies, who you'll probably recognise as the headmaster from The Inbetweeners, is the Taskmaster, and it's his job to set the wacky challenges and decide who will be victorious, while his sidekick Alex Horne coaxes the brave contenders through the madcap tasks.

The prizes up for grabs include everything from a wedding ring to a signed football and even a Christmas snow globe.

Roisin Conaty, who appears alongside the London-born Davies in the Channel 4 sitcom Man Down (she plays Jo, close pal of Davies' Dan), says much depends on the Taskmaster's mood. "If we can get to the point where he judges my tasks not long after a nap and a sandwich, we're doing all right."

Frank Skinner comes in for a bit of flack from Davies at the beginning of episode one, for "wearing a suit, and because he's both professional and from a different generation to the others". He describes the show as "the closest I'll ever be to being in the Olympics, but with zero team spirit". Is he in it to win it? "It's head and heart, I do want to win, definitely, but I do realise that if I did have a straightforward answer to every task, it would be pretty dull," West Brom fan Skinner says: "I can see myself ending up like Kevin Keegan's Newcastle – won't quite win it but entertained a lot of people."

Romesh Ranganathan, from Crawley, West Sessex, says: "If you're asking me if I regret doing the show: yes, yes I do. What I found is that some of the tasks have been humiliating, some have been embarrassing and others I don't really want going out on TV, but I've signed the thing now so that's out of my control." The former teacher, who's married with three kids, puts some of his shortcomings down to Taskmaster's running clock. "It affected me more than I would have liked. As soon as the clock started running, I panicked."

Tim Key felt he really nailed it when high-fiving a 55-year-old, throwing a teabag into a teacup from a distance and cooking a meal using ingredients starting with every letter of the alphabet. The Cambridgeshire comedian and performance poet admits things backfired when he carried 20 kilos of ice down a verge. "My idea for that one was to go to the riverbank and throw the ice off, but the tide was out," he explains.

Josh Widdicombe thought he was doing quite well at this, "then I tailed off," he confesses. The challenges might seem a bit madcap, but the Devon-born comedian thinks they'd be considered "too mainstream, slightly pedestrian" by extreme game show fans in Japan".

The Pennine Way (BBC2, 7.30pm)

PAUL Rose continues his journey along the Pennine Way, meeting people who remember the opening ceremony of the famous trail, which took place 50 years ago in the Yorkshire Dales village of Malham. He has a crack at climbing the limestone cliff face of Malham Cove, gets a front row seat at a sheep market in Wensleydale and enjoys a well-earned pint in the Tan Hill Inn.

The Three Day Nanny( Channel 4, 8pm)

BACK to the naughty step as we follow the progress of professional childminder Kathryn Mewes, who has spent the past 20 or so years taking care of youngsters. During that time, she has developed certain methods that can help parents with badly behaved children. She begins in East Grinstead, West Sussex, where Susan and James Rogers are having trouble with three-year-old twins Alfie and Harry.

Viv Hardwick